Green Room (film)

Green Room
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jeremy Saulnier
Produced by	Neil Kopp Victor Moyers Anish Savjani
Written by	Jeremy Saulnier
Starring	Anton Yelchin Imogen Poots Alia Shawkat Joe Cole Callum Turner Patrick Stewart
Music by	Brooke Blair Will Blair
Cinematography	Sean Porter
Edited by	Julia Bloch
Production company	Broad Green Pictures Film Science
Distributed by	A24
Release dates	May 17, 2015 (2015-05-17) (Cannes) April 15, 2016 (2016-04-15) (United States)
Running time	95 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$5 million[2]
Box office	$3.8 million[3]

Green Room is a 2015 American horror film^[4] written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, and produced by Neil Kopp, Victor Moyers, and Anish Savjani. The film stars Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, and Patrick Stewart, and focuses on a punk band who find themselves attacked by neo-Nazi skinheads after witnessing a murder at a remote club in the Pacific Northwest.

Filming began in October 2014 in Portland, Oregon. Green Room was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.^[5] The film began a limited release on April 15, 2016, before being widely released on May 13 through A24.^[6]

Plot

Pat, Sam, Reece, and Tiger are members of a punk band, the Ain't Rights, traveling through the Pacific Northwest. In Seaside, Oregon, they meet local radio host Tad, who arranges a gig outside Portland through his cousin, Daniel. The band arrives at the club, a neo-Nazi skinhead bar in the remote Oregon woods. They open with a Dead Kennedys cover, "Nazi Punks Fuck Off", which enrages the audience, but they win them over with their original songs.

After the show, Pat goes to the green room to retrieve Sam's forgotten phone and discovers a girl, Emily, who has been recently stabbed to death. In the room is also Amber, her best friend, who asks him to call the police. He does so, but bouncers Gabe and Big Justin confiscate the group's phones and hold them at gunpoint. Gabe pays a skinhead to stab another to create a cover story for the police who respond to the call, then consults the club owner, Darcy, who decides to kill the band to eliminate witnesses. The group overpowers Big Justin and holds him hostage, leading to negotiations through the door with Darcy, who asks them to surrender the gun. As Pat opens the door, Amber sees that he is not alone and warns Pat, who tries to keep the gun. Darcy and his men then slash away at Pat's arm until he drops the gun. When Big Justin tries to attack the group, Reece places him in a chokehold and Amber disembowels him with the box cutter they find in his pocket.

The group searches for another way out, but find only a heroin lab hidden in an underground bunker beneath the floorboards. They arm themselves with improvised weapons and exit the green room into the empty club, but are attacked by a pit bull, which kills Tiger; chased onto the stage, Amber and Pat drive the dog away with microphone feedback. Reece tries to flee through a window, but is stabbed to death by a skinhead. Pat, Amber, and Sam retreat to the green room and are confronted by skinhead Daniel, who mourns the loss of his girlfriend, Emily. Amber explains that the skinheads killed Emily when she decided to leave the neo-Nazi movement. Daniel agrees to help them escape and leads the band into the club, where he is shot by the bartender. The group kills the bartender and takes his shotgun, but Darcy and his men kill Sam and wound Amber, who scrambles back to the green room with Pat.

Darcy sends in two more skinheads to kill Pat and Amber before leaving the venue with the bodies, planning to stage their deaths to appear accidental. Pat lures one skinhead into the bunker while the other remains in the green room, where Amber ambushes him. As Pat struggles with the skinhead, Amber sneaks up and shoots him. Gabe enters the green room to surrender; they allow him to leave to call the police. As they wander into the woods, they discover Darcy and his men disposing of the band members' bodies. Pat and Amber kill Darcy's henchman before executing Darcy as he starts to flee. Their ammunition and energy spent, Pat and Amber sit on the side of the road and wait for police.

Cast

• Anton Yelchin as Pat, bassist of the Ain't Rights
• Alia Shawkat as Sam, the guitarist
• Joe Cole as Reece, the drummer
• Callum Turner as Tiger, the singer
• Imogen Poots as Amber, witness to the murder
• Patrick Stewart as Darcy Banker, leader of the skinheads
• Macon Blair as Gabe, a skinhead bouncer
• Mark Webber as Daniel, a skinhead
• Kai Lennox as Clark
• Eric Edelstein as Big Justin, a skinhead bouncer
• Samuel Summer as Jonathan
• David W. Thompson as Tad, a radio host and promoter
• Colton Ruscheinsky as Alan

Production

The movie came from Saulnier‘s desire to create a thriller set in a green room, calling the idea "an obsession"^[7] Saulnier created a short film set in one as part of a 48-hour film challenge in 2007 although that involved the supernatural and according to Saulnier "Really kind of fun and hammy." However he still wanted a chance to do his green room movie "the right way.^[7] Although the film features a large amount of violence and what Saulnier calls "full frontal gore" he has gone on record as stating that it is not "sadistic", and that every act of violence apart from the initiating incident is done with a reason.^[8] As such Saulnier's made sure that there were no "gratuitous close ups" of recently deceased characters.^[8]

On May 22, 2014, it was announced that Broad Green Pictures would finance and produce the crime thriller film directed and written by Jeremy Saulnier, with Film Science.^[9] Anish Savjani, Neil Kopp and Victor Moyers would produce the film.^[9] On October 16, Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots joined the lead cast of the film, along with Alia Shawkat, Callum Turner, Joe Cole, Macon Blair and Mark Webber.^[10] On October 21, Patrick Stewart was added to the cast to play Darcy Banker, the leader of a violent white supremacist group,^[11] while other cast includes Kai Lennox, Eric Edelstein and Taylor Tunes.^[11]

Filming

Principal photography began in October 2014 in Portland, Oregon.^[12][13] The location for Tad's house was in Astoria, Oregon, on the Oregon coast, and the forest scenes were filmed in the Mount Hood National Forest.^[14]

Release

On October 29, 2014, WestEnd Films acquired the international rights to the film.^[15] The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2015.^[16] Shortly after, it was announced A24 Films had acquired distribution rights to the film.^[17] The film screened on opening night of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, on September 10, 2015.^[18]

The film was originally to open in a limited release on April 1, 2016, before opening in a wide release on April 15, 2016.^[19] However, it was moved to April 15, in limited release, and May 13 wide.^[6]

Box office

According to BoxOffice Mojo, Green Room opened at #30 in its limited release, premiering in 3 theaters, culminating over $87,984. In its official wide release, the film premiered at 777 theaters, taking the #16 rank on opening weekend, and grossing more than $411,376.^[3]

Critical reception

The film holds a 91% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 179 reviews, and has an average rating of 7.7/10. The critical consensus reads: "Green Room delivers unapologetic genre thrills with uncommon intelligence and powerfully acted élan."^[4] Metacritic reports an 79 out of 100 rating based on 42 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[20]

IGN awarded Green Room a score on 9 out of 10, saying, "This follow-up to the brilliant Blue Ruin pits a rock band against white supremacists with ace, ultra-violent results."^[21] Guy Lodge of Variety called it "a technically sharp backwoods horror-thriller that lacks a human element".^[22] Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that it is entertaining but "less disciplined, less original and less memorable work than Blue Ruin".^[23]

At the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, the film finished third in the balloting for the Grolsch People's Choice Midnight Madness Award.^[24]

References

External links

• Official website
• Green Room at the Internet Movie Database
• Green Room at Box Office Mojo
• Green Room at Rotten Tomatoes
• Green Room at Metacritic