Review of Green Room (2016) by Peter F — 30 Apr 2016

After debuting two years ago with the excellent indie revenge thriller Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier returns with yet another hyper-violent action movie, albeit with a larger budget and more ambition. Shot in a style more familiar in art house pictures, Green Room immediately responds as cutting edge, and it takes its time towards getting to the viscera.

While sure, beneath its punk-rock aesthetic it's a fairly familiar story, it has enough character development in-tact to have us care for the horrible things the characters experience, and the type of reserved presentation that you rarely see in any genre picture.

If there's one disappointment, it's probably that of Patrick Stewart's casting as the villain. The venerable genre actor isn't menacing enough for some reason, and he also struggles with holding an American accent.

All-in-all, Saulnier's sophomore picture is a very strong genre break-down, even if it's a notch less satisfying than his debut.