GREEN ROOM Review

Much like with director Jeremy Saulnier's previous film, Blue Ruin, his latest positions itself as something of a straight genre film with bigger ambitions underneath the surface. With Ruin, Saulnier was keen to allow the audience to piece together the story of the protagonist as he pulled back the layers at his own pace, but the real trick was that he kept audiences transfixed the whole time despite the fact we lacked large chunks of context. In his new feature, Green Room, Saulnier once again works from a script solely of his own doing, but instead of teasing out the challenges our main characters face this time around our "heroes" are placed on the front lines against their very visible enemies-Saulnier standing between them ready to let his checkered flag fly at any moment. This choice to not rely so much on mystery seems to come from nothing more than a need to tell a different story in a different way, but the tendency to want to hold back seems natural to the writer/director as the backbone of Green Room's plot (but not all of its tension) relies on the audience knowing the immediate threats of the situation without knowing what originally put these events in motion. It's a keenly crafted screenplay that tends to get slightly redundant near the end despite its already slim running time. That said, the main objective for the multiple protagonists is never unclear and the conspiring reasons they find themselves in the situation along with several other factors that come to be of critical importance are introduced in a sharp fashion. It is not the storytelling that will fascinate here though, but rather the way in which Saulnier and his team are able to balance the downright horrific nature of what unfolds in front of us while keeping the tone that akin to something of an eighties era slasher. There is a heft, an integrity even to a number of characters and events, but there is also a very knowing tone, a sarcastic or rather a very punk attitude to the whole affair that elevates what is essentially a hostage thriller to that of a true rebel among its genre trappings.

BLUE RUIN Review

There is a stillness to Jeremy Saulnier's Blue Ruin that is inescapable and transfixing from its opening shots. There is a sense of calculation, of very precise intention in its tone and color palette that lure you in with their solemnity and then blow your expectations out of the water with its blunt violence. It is a technique that is tough to put ones finger on in terms of how exactly we become so intrigued in a story we know very little about. We meet Dwight (Macon Blair) as he sits bathing in a tub, but stumbles out and through a window when he hears noise from outside. We pick up on clues that are dropped in each moment and we begin to piece together who this man is and how he came to be at this point in his life. His appearance suggests a large amount of mystery and misery. He is brought into the police station by a sweet-natured female officer who informs him of news that likely floods his minds with endless possibilities and scenarios, but all we hear are the words of the officer assuring Dwight that he will be fine. They are words he doesn't hear and that he doesn't intend to try and uphold. From the outset of this vague premise we follow Dwight as he more or less sets out on a revenge-fueled mission that can only end a number of ways, none of which are particularly promising for our protagonist. What I enjoyed about Blue Ruin though is not that it both elicits thought and tension as well as it does pure entertainment (though these aren't bad reasons to enjoy it at all), but that it gains these qualities and moves with its ever-increasing momentum because of the directorial choices being made. Saulnier makes very determined decisions in his shot selection and environments to both imbue his film with a strong sense of style and also tell a rather simple and cliched story in a way that feels fresh.