Pat (Anton Yelchin),Sam (Alia Shawkat),Reece, and Tiger are members of a struggling punk band on the road. They steal gas, work for scraps, and concentrate on playing live. They arrive at a remote bar outside of Portland. It's soon obvious that it's a neo-Nazi hangout. After a contentious set, Pat returns to the green room to retrieve Sam's phone. He sees a murdered girl and tries to call the cops. The band and the dead girl's friend Amber (Imogen Poots) overpower their guard. Senior leader Darcy Banker (Patrick Stewart) is called in.

This is a fairly simple horror premise. There are some solid young actors in this. The biggest coup is getting Patrick Stewart to play the big bad. He's a Shakespearian actor throwing his full weight into the role. The young characters are not necessarily the brightest bulb in the lot but that's perfectly fine. Everybody is making mistakes in this chaos. One character does die sooner than I expected and that took some of the air out of the movie for me.

GREEN ROOM is director Jeremy Saulnier's follow-up to the excellent BLUE RUIN, a low key thriller that came out nowhere to become one of my favourite American films of recent times. The good news is that this follow-up, despite being more action-packed and visceral, is every bit as good as BLUE RUIN and even more violent, if that's even possible.

The story is quite standard here and more predictable than in BLUE RUIN, but the emphasis is on visceral thrills instead and on that basis it doesn't disappoint. The characters are somewhat unlikeable although Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots do grow on you as the story progresses, mainly through their refusal to give in to their oppressors. Said bad guys are a pack of Neo-Nazis led by a quietly frightening Patrick Stewart. The first 20 minutes aren't very interesting, but after a plot twist it remains exciting right up until the climax, just like a classic such as Walter Hill's SOUTHERN COMFORT.

The single location setting is brought to the fore here by Saulnier's expert and claustrophobic direction. The violence is intense, extremely graphic, and completely disturbing with it. It's not a big blow 'em up adventure story, it's just as dark, gritty, and realistic as BLUE RUIN was, in which things never go according to plan and innocent people always get hurt. It's a mini-masterpiece of a film, and one of the most suspenseful I've seen in ages.

"Green Room" (not to be mistaken for "Green Zone") is an American thriller movie that premiered on several film festivals last year, but it took until June this year for it to receive a wide release. At least here in Germany. The writer and director is Jeremy Saulnier, a man who has made films for quite a while already, but his big breakthrough came only recently with the 2013 film "Blue Ruin". So it seems he has a bit of a color thingey going on. Maybe one of his next films will be titled "Red Cabin"? But back to this one here. It runs for 95 minutes approximately and features some of the rising stars from cinema these days, such as Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots and Alia Shawkat who I was glad to see here as I liked her on "Arrested Development".

The story is about a music group, very much from the political left, who ends up giving a concert at a location that is a famous Nazi meeting place. And if this was not enough already, they happen to witness the murder of a young woman. The consequence is that the Nazi gang, led by Patrick Stewart's character, tries to kill them and they succeed in some of the cases, maybe in all? Watch for yourself. After all, this is a good watch for people who love claustrophobic horror films without supernatural aspects, so maybe the likes of "Panic Room". I really love the latter and this may be one reason why I also got to enjoy this film here. At its runtime of under 100 minutes, it stays truly essential and that's nice. No need to drag it. There were also here and there a couple scenes that I did not like, for example with the desert island music group (sucks that this was used at the end too),Saulnier tried to make the film a bit too artistic and that's not what he should have gone for. Best would have been for it to stay on the path of being pointless fun. Also the face paintings at the end were a bit embarrassing.

As a whole, I had a pretty good time watching this, occasionally even a great time. Tough to say what was the best thing about the movie. I guess it is a mix of the convincing script and strong performances (especially Stewart). In my very case, it certainly helps that I am crushing a lot on Shawkat and Poots. Horror film maniacs will maybe criticize that it was the usual concept of killing off one by one, but I did not mind it. I liked the way they handled it and the ending scene with the mourning dog was pretty beautiful too. The romance aspects between the two survivors was slightly there, but never in a way that it would distract from the more important plot points. Overall, a well-rounded little film that is absolutely worth checking out. Thumbs up.