Blood and guts and hardcore punk

Alia Shawkat and Anton Yelchin star in "Green Room." Image courtesy A24.

Punk rock is one of the few artistic genres that comes with a lifestyle. People don’t just listen to punk; they are punk, following a specific aesthetic and engaging in actions considered punk. Such actions usually drawing the ire of someone, for example performing a vulgar anti-skinhead song to a gathering of Neo-Nazis as the band in “Green Room” does with its first song. It's an audacious moment writer/director Jeremy Saulnier uses to tease the possible reason why The Ain't Rights, the band at the center of the film, will have to survive a night against an opposing force of young idiots; there's a certain logic to defiance being a motivation for vengeance, that the proud history of antagonism within punk rock would be the cause of their demise.

But the root of The Ain't Rights problems are less Dead Kennedys and more “Scooby-Doo” in nature, with a few kids finding themselves in the wrong place at exactly the right time. It's a theme Saulnier has explored before in his magnificent “Blue Ruin,” and one he picks up again in the superb thriller “Green Room.” All of a sudden, the members of the gas-stealing punk rock group (composed of Anton Yelchin's Pat, Alia Shawkat's Sam, Joe Cole's Reece, and Callum Turner's Tiger) are trapped in a room with a young woman’s body, a very large man (Eric Edelstein) with a gun, and a scared girl (Imogen Poots' Amber) attempting to escape skinheads.

A premise like that evokes images of bloody carnage set to a hardcore punk score, with body parts flying about wantonly. “Green Room,” to it's benefit, is not that type of film; the presence alone of the great Patrick Stewart (playing Neo-Nazi leader Darcy Banker) assures some level of gravitas and an assurance that this midnight movie doesn't go completely off the rails. Rather, Saulnier and company are far more interested in building up through a slow burn, establishing the dire nature of The Ain't Rights' situation and building on the claustrophobia of being trapped in a room with no way out and no idea what's going on behind the door. It isn't until the stakes are set that the violence commences and Saulnier reveals how far out of their element The Ain't Rights are, and how unlikely it is they'll survive against Banker and his flock.

In a weird way, one can't get much more punk than fighting when the odds of survival are far beyond your comprehension. It's easy to pretend to be punk, to wear grimy jeans and claim Black Flag as the band you'd bring with you to a desert island (a running joke the film). It's much more impressive to prove it and battle against anti-punk ideals like totalitarianism and racial oppression represented by the machete-wielding Neo-Nazis waiting on the other side of the wall. The idea sounds like a fantasy a person might replay in his or her head while bored on a train to work, slaughtering nameless white supremacists and saving the boy or girl – Yelchin or Poots depending on the perspective – from peril.

“Green Room” is too honest to be a fantasy. When reality hits, it strikes hard and with machetes, knives, dogs and shotguns, leaving chaos and ruin in its wake. And it presents such moments with great intensity and with the right amount of graphic to keep it away from camp territory. The way “Green Room” builds up and eventually plays out reflects Saulnier's talents as a filmmaker; it's exceedingly difficult to make audiences gasp at the right moments for the right reasons. Muffled sounds of awe and appreciation popped out quite a bit from viewers who were not expecting to see that amount of blood flow or to see a perfectly executed jump scare in a movie that is not quite a horror film. “Green Room” is a bit too surreal with its dialogue and how it treats its characters to fit into stereotypical horror.

At it's heart, “Green Room” is Saulnier's ode to punk rock. It's a film about fighting the powers that be, about taking on the man with whatever weapons you have at your disposal (usually a guitar, drum set, screaming vocals and mediocre bass player) in a do-it-yourself fashion. The film is rife with ingenuity and a subtle cleverness and brilliance found in the highest ranks of the genre, while being much more complicated than its exterior indicates. And there aren't too many things more punk rock than creating art that's brutal, short, grungy and intelligent.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 94 minute

Genre: Thriller

Ask Away

Target audience: Midnight film fiends and people who want to see Patrick Stewart break a little bad.

Take the whole family?: A few dog maulings and the general bloody mayhem contained in this film make it a no go for kids.

Theater or Netflix?: An awesome film to watch with a late-night crowd.

How great is Patrick Stewart?: He is nothing less than fantastic in “Green Room.” He’s a ferociously quiet figure whose most dangerous when he's deciphering depicted working his way through the puzzle of the situation. Stewart playing a Neo-Nazi runs against his most well-regarded role as the peaceful Captain Picard, but there are elements of Picard in Darcy Banker; both are smart, capable men whose leadership skills are never in doubt.

Watch this as well?: Director Jeremy Saulnier's “Blue Ruin” is a terrific film in its own right and shares a few themes and a lot of imagery with “Green Room.” Also watch the original “Assault on Precinct 13” directed by John Carpenter and “Mulholland Drive,” which shares a calm surrealness in the dialogue.