Review of Green Room (2016) by Saintdecky — 06 Feb 2017

Green Room is an enjoyable, violent, gory, and suspenseful movie. It may not be one of the greatest movies of 2016, but it deserves some recognition.

Characters/Acting: Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots are amazing, and the rest of the cast, especially Patrick Stewart, definitely chip in to make this movie great. The characters are maybe a tad underwritten, as I've seen some people complain about it. Only a few of the characters really get an ark, and the others don't. But I felt the movie still did an okay job with the characters and their development overall.

Plot: One major complaint I have is that sometimes it was a bit hard to figure out what was going on. There were a few scenes where a bunch of new information was introduced, and it took me time to figure it out, taking away from the movie. The movie is still relatively slow paced throughout, but it didn't bore me. It also starts out a bit slow, before the band gets to the green room. I almost thought I had rented the wrong movie, since it starts out with a more quiet, slow tone and goes by very slowly. Luckily the tension builds up through the movie, ending in pure violence and intensity.

Violence: It's not constant blood and gore, but Green Room definitely has its scenes of brutal violence and gore. One of the only movies that I can remember in recent times that made me cringe at the realistic brutality and blood. The film doesn't exaggerate though, making it feel all the more realistic. For example: when someone gets a machete to the neck, half their head or their whole head doesn't come off; the blade only makes a shallow cut, deep enough to kill though. This made it feel more realistic and not laughable like other horror movies that try too hard to make the audience flinch at the violence.

Tone: The tone is incredibly dark as you can imagine, and the set design as well as the lighting really adds to the dark, violent, murky mood.

Overall, don't watch Green Room if you are squeamish of violence and brutality, because there's plenty of this in Green Room.