Art Smitten: Reviews - 2016

Green Room is the latest film by Jeremy Saulnier, an American filmmaker whose two previous films, Murder Party (2007) and Blue Ruin (2013), both explore and analyse violence in various forms and settings. And now Green Room, which premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2015, extends this obsession to even darker territory. It centres on a punk band who goes to play at a small concert venue in the backwoods of Oregon, witnesses a murder, and is immediately taken hostage in the green room of the film's title and not allowed to leave. From then on, things only get worse. We start to find out more and more about the concert venue and the people behind it, the vice-like tension grows and grows and grows, and the blood of many a character is unceremoniously spilled. The cast includes Anton Yelchin and Alia Shawkat as members of the band, as well as Macon Blair, who's acted in and co-produced all of Saulnier's films. And, in an out-of-type casting, we have Patrick Stewart who excels as the owner of the venue, the