Green Room

Nazi punks fuck off. It kept me on my feet like a pit bull and tightened its grip at the end. It follows a single logic - the logic of escalating tension. I turn off the logic circuits - this film is everything I expect from a slasher. Great characters, atmospheric environment, a smoothed-out villain and intense "game" finale. Brilliant point. I enjoy every detail. DIY garage pleasure with a properly turned-up amp. Probably the best Yelchin role ever. (01/06/2017)

"Nazi Punks Fuck Off!!!" isn't just the world famous Dead Kennedys hit song that is featured here, but basically the genius of the entire Green Room. And not only thematically, but also in terms of form. Listening to this song, many people think of a screaming punk animal, sizzling and scratching around in a darkened room smelling of sweat, beer, and tobacco. The strings wail under the incessant barrage of beats, and the drums grow audibly farther away from their original form with each beat. Green Room tries to convey the same feeling to the viewer, but mainly through the visuals. Surprisingly, it's not punk-aggressive and stylized. On the contrary, it perfectly evokes the atmosphere of the humid gloom of the early evening and the early morning, thus placing the film's setting somehow "anywhere" and thereby enhancing the experience. The resulting transformation into the home invasion sub-genre before the halfway point of the film may disappoint some a little, as the film returns to genre from something that up to this point has developed quite atypically, but this brings to the surface perhaps the most surprising aspect of the film, which is the terrific script. Not in that it somehow uniquely arranges the plot and creates unexpected payoffs, but in how well the characters and situations can be written. The individual scenes no few surprises, both in terms of the body count and the behavior of the supporting characters. The nature of the danger here is uncomfortably real, however demonic it may seem in places (the first encounter with the red laces), which is made more effective in the scenes of individual deaths or, for example, in the perversely moving finale with the dog. So, although the film lures us in with the promise of daring trash where punks mow down Nazis, in reality people are killing other people here, and the filmmakers don't try to evoke our empathy, as they usually do with home invasion, by making the actors decent people with jobs and kids, but by including all sorts of details in the setting or the characters' behavior in each scene. Which helps us to get completely into the film and imagine ourselves in the given situation. It's a shame that a few scenes are so dark that you can't make out who's who, otherwise I'd go for five. I'm still terribly cheerful about the existence of this film, though. (07/03/2016)

The most surprising aspect of Green Room is the non-filmic aspect consisting in the fact that it polarises the audience at all. One would expect that people would simply enjoy a flick that serves up an absorbing survival story in exchange for a drop of suspension of disbelief. Green Room is neither a realistic drama nor an ambitious revision of genre rules, but rather an ingeniously and not quite traditionally constructed genre film. Like Wolf Creek, for example, it takes its time initiating the confrontation. When it comes this time, genre excess does not emerge, but rather realism continues to be applied within the boundaries of the genre. From that, it is apparent that the film does not play completely according to formulas or, said more precisely, that it does not develop the situation predictably through clichés, but spontaneously through the characters and the playing out of the claustrophobic situation. Thanks to that, the overarching survival stand-off narrative gets some fresh blood in its veins. The gradual alternation of attempts to survive and the revelation of facts that are unknown to both the viewer and the characters keeps the tension building. Thanks to the fact that the filmmakers stay grounded in terms of eye-catching genre elements (from overwrought heroism and pompous negativity to superficial attractions), the traditional alienation of the film does not bring up any questions about what will happen next or how it will turn out, and the impulsively behaving characters only carry the viewer onward to the next unconventionally constructed scene. But apparently not for everyone. Then the question is, why? Because today’s film fans have become so enamoured with overly sophisticated blockbusters and high-quality TV that they cannot enjoy a precise, non-camp genre spectacle that is not exceedingly wise, but is just inconspicuously clever? (08/08/2016)

On the one hand, a number of promising ideas that enrich the film as a slasher (the ugly setting and the whole community of skinhead freaks, the murderous slaughterhouse as a means of getting rid of witnesses, the isolation of the titular room), on the other hand, a completely sloppy approach to most of the characters, whom we don't care about, not very interesting direction and not much of a script to speak of – I liked the initial psychological pressure and unpredictability, too bad it turned into a mechanically repetitive parade in a closed building where at times logic gets lost. But I still had a good time, the violence was impressive, the pace remained at a decent level and of course Patrick Stewart in an unconventional villain role was a delight. Inoffensively watchable, nothing more, nothing less. (09/17/2018)

A pretty solid bloodbath that I somehow managed to overlook for two years, but I finally made time for it. The rating on this site must be for a different film because the percentage it received is simply undeserved for a movie that’s almost perfectly minimalist. It had a small budget, long dialogues, and little action, yet you’ll still thoroughly enjoy the film. I liked the unconventional setting where the film took place, as you don’t often see this type of film centered around such an unsympathetic group of people. The mostly unknown actors (with two obvious exceptions) performed incredibly well, making every step believable, and you could easily imagine reacting the same way. The story was soaked in a thick atmosphere that sent chills down your spine. In the most tense moments, the creators handled things well and didn’t "kill" the film with some dumb mistake—they managed to maintain the tension. I got my share of grittier and bloodier scenes, and the epic finale was the cherry on top. What kept it from a perfect score was the imbalance between action and dialogue, which were heavily disproportionate. I give it 83%. (08/25/2017)