Review of Green Room (2016) by Phillip D — 18 Jul 2016

Despite it's fantastic rating, I think the critics have completely misjudged Saulnier and his talents with the exquisitely crafted Green Room. I mean certainly, the man has a penchant for minimalist film making and scoring, tension and he is building his own style of the before/after effects of savage violence.

However, in his third feature, I am beginning to notice a pattern in Saulnier's work that hints at a larger and more interesting narrative. Throughout Blue Ruin and Green Room, Saulnier explores the savage, impoverished nature of rural white America, carefully dissecting the nuances of blood, community and belief.

Make no mistake, the Nazi punks are certainly the bad guys in Green Room and Saulnier doesn't pull his punches there but at the same time, he creates a more complex narrative than black and white bad guy/good guy.

The red laces, the true believers, Patrick Stewart's careful manipulation and hidden romances all help to ground a simple bad guy narrative in something more real, the story not just of how power, poverty, ignorance, isolation and small town white America create and corrupt people capable of awful things but also how those same desires haunt us all.

Built on some of the most convincing realism in Hollywood, Saulnier's films are scary and intense because they remind us of what we're capable of deep inside. They also serve as a reminder to the artsy crowd that the oft dismissed radical right wing has stronger and more complex motivations that simple racism or sexism.

It's a challenging narrative that Saulnier weaves but its done excellently and in a way that mainstream, Oscar bait movies like 12 Years A Slave simply couldn't manage. This level of nuance is becoming Saulnier's trademark and Green Room is the current height of it, wrapping all that into a fantastically brutal thriller and horror flick that features exceptional minimalist performances from all aboard, especially the late Yelchin and Poots, not to mention a truly chilling and versatile performance from the great Patrick Stewart.

It exciting, its brutal and it's 100% worth seeing.