Green Room (DVD)

Stars: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Mark Webber, Eric Edelstein, Macon Blair, Kai Lennox, Patrick Stewart

Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Jeremy Saulnier achieved significant auteur status from critics for his second feature, Blue Ruin in 2013.

Now, three years later, that status has served him well in ensuring he has garnered excellent reviews as the writer and director of this well-made but hardly groundbreaking shocker charting the unfortunate fates that befall the members of down-on-their-luck punk rock band Callum Turner, Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat and Joe Cole.

We first meet the musicians after their truck has been run off the road and crashed into a large field of corn.

However I felt that a great deal of what follows, well-staged though it may be and nastier than the average shocker as Saulnier racks up the slice and dice suspense and segues into torture-porn territory, might well be seen as derivative, not to say corny.

When, having stolen the fuel needed to get their van going again, the luckless musicians accept a gig in a backwoods Oregon roadhouse and unfortunately antagonize the largely White Supremacist audience with ultimately fatal results.

For me the one genuinely surprising element was the casting of Patrick Stewart (with an interesting, possibly Oregon?, accent) as the sadistic leader of the Supremacists.

Alan Frank

USA 2015. UK Distributor: Picturehouse Entertainment. Colour.
91 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 18.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 2, Violence/Horror 3, Drugs 2, Swearing 3.

Review date: 15 Sep 2016