GREEN ROOM
Dir: Jeremy Saulnier (18, 94 mins)
An unsettling, visceral horror riff, Green Room is a gory cut above most of its similar gutfellows. A tightly wound, effective shocker where conventional horror tropes are flouted and intensity is key. Anton Yeltsin and Alia Shawkat are members of a punk rock band that take an unwise gig at a neo-Nazi bar. All seems to go well until they witness a murder and end up barricaded in their green room, with an excellent Imogen Poots, as skinhead thugs and their leader, a surprising Patrick Stewart, bay for blood outside. And boy do they get that blood. Saulnier’s previous film was Blue Ruin, a superior thriller that toyed with a noir revenge template, and here horror expectations are mutilated, quite literally. No one is safe, the violence pulls no punches and tension escalates. Grim and gripping with plenty of look away moments, this is a taut exercise in exploitation.