Music comedy a fine mess
Weedy punks battle burly Nazi skinheads
In most scary movies, crashing your van in a field of corn would signal the start of some bat-crazy stuff — possessed children, evil “rescuers,” zombie hordes — you name it.
But in Green Room, a pitchblack comic horror from writer/ director Jeremy Saulnier, the opening-scene crash is no biggie; the bassist of the punk band the Ain’t Rights just fell asleep at the wheel. A little gas siphoning and they’re on the road again.
The real problem is that this fervently anti-marketing group can’t draw a big enough crowd to cover the tiny cost of the gasoline they don’t steal.
When their latest gig nets the foursome less than seven bucks apiece, they reluctantly accept another job at a white-supremacist hangout.
“Right-wing,” their booker informs them. “Well, technically ultraleft but not affiliated.”
Displaying an almost suicidal sense of irony, the band opens with a cover of Nazi Punks F--Off by the Dead Kennedys. Then, before they can escape with their fee, they witness a stabbing, and are soon barricaded in the club’s grotty green room. OK, so this is the real problem, although they can’t quite let go of their conversation about what each one’s “desert-island band” would be.
Saulnier, whose last film was the 2013 festival hit Blue Ruin, crafts a gruesome setup as simple as is it inevitable. The punk rockers are weedy and meek compared to their burly neo-Nazi captors — imagine if the Mystery Gang consisted of three Shaggys and a Scooby. They end up with a gun, a hostage and an ally (Imogen Poots), but still can’t talk their way out of the situation.
That’s in part because the man on the other side of the greenroom door is a quietly malevolent puppet master named Darcy Banker, played with simmering malice by Patrick Stewart.
The daft punk band wouldn’t be a sympathetic group in most movies, but we’ve already established that Saulnier doesn’t make most movies. Besides, skinheads as villains trump just about everyone. And Anton Yelchin as the band’s reluctant leader is an appealing chap, reaching deep into his personal history — “we played paintball once ...” — for a tactical advantage.
The fight will get nasty before it’s over, with liberal (and inventive) use of fire extinguishers, duct tape, attack dogs, firearms and sound-system feedback. There are some wincingly grisly images, but that’s what happens when you mix punks and skinheads. It’s messy, but it’s fun.