If you imagined that "Beyoncé's Lemonade has just dropped" or "Radiohead have a new album out on May 8th" represented the most exciting cultural announcements of the year, then hold on your various hats, because Jeremy Saulnier's new film has Nazis versus Punks.
Ain’t Rights are an unsuccessful hardcore band who depend on siphoning petrol in car parks as they venture from one low-paying gig to another.
With expected reservations, the right-on youngsters agree to play a backwoods club frequented by folks their contact describes as “right-wing but maybe extremely left-wing”.
Their decision to play a spirited cover of Dead Kennedys' Nazi Punks Fuck Off puts the viewer on edge; said viewer had best get used to that feeling as this heart-thumping thriller only escalates from here.
Remarkably, the band survive the set. But when they inadvertently stumble onto wrongdoing backstage, the punks are forced to barricade themselves in the waiting area of the title. Patrick Stewart, meanwhile, leads the gang of neo-Nazi thugs and murderous dogs that wait at the door.
For those unlucky souls who missed out on Jeremy Saulnier's 2013 film Blue Ruin, the Brooklyn-based writer-director knows how to twist both genres and knives. In common with its predecessor, Green Room exists in lesser-spotted America and pitches rarefied subcultures against each other. What begins as a nail-biting thriller segues into carnage, replete with ripped throats and wounds that seek to redefine "gaping".
Viewers with delicate sensibilities may flinch, but Saulnier is too clever, too neo-realist and too funny to allow the material to descend into a B-movie splatter-fest.
In a film characterised by splendid, nervy performances, Imogen Poots – going the whole MacGyver with her mullet – arguably steals the show as a white supremacist punkette caught up in the crossfire.
Cinematographer Seán Porter finds compelling and interesting things to do with confined spaces. And Saulnier’s appositely neat, confined screenplay even finds an interesting things to do with the Larsen effect. If you go down to the Aryan lunatic woods today.
