“Green Room”: The Punk Band vs. Neo-Nazi Slasher

Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room takes advantage of two primal human fears to fill its audience with a profound sense of unease:  the fear of confinement, and the fear of being outnumbered in a fight.  The film establishes an omnipresent feeling of dread by casting the members of a punk rock band into the deep end of a hinterland Neo-Nazi club.  Though the set itself is fine, one of the members witnesses something he shouldn’t, and the film becomes a hyper-realistic slasher thriller set in this single, remote location.  Though the story essentially recreates the “Ten Little Indians” trope, there is a subtlety and direction to the plot and a dimensionality to the characters that raises Green Room above the common slasher.

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