PERFORMANCE ANXIETY: Movie Reviews of Green Room and Viva by Howard Casner

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Warning: SPOILERS

rev 1Green Room, the new thriller from writer/director Jeremy Saulnier (the follow up to his well-received indie film Blue Ruin, but no, he’s not doing a series of titles with color in them), has a marvelous set up. 

A group of head banger musicians take a last minute job to play at a remote white supremacist bar (does it bother anyone else in the audience that neo-Nazis and Washington DC millennials like the same type of music) because, well, their last gig got cancelled and they’re desperate for money (Saulnier does a clever thing here—as the first number the band plays, they assert their artistic integrity by singing an anti-Nazi song; it serves to help give them sympathy from the audience for taking the job in the first place). 

After the show, they accidentally walk in on a murder and are then trapped in the titular location and must figure a way out of the mess they’re now in.

I mean, it’s a really neat little first act.  It’s certainly gets one empathizing with their situation, wondering what you could possibly due in the same situation. 

At the same time, this is also where the movie, for me, stopped fulfilling its initial promise.  Read the rest of this entry »