Zombie horror flicks have dominating big screen fright fests in recent years and when it’s not the living dead it’s some form of paranormal activity sending you into cold sweats, which has left the nightmare of regular killers on the loose, as is the case in Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room, on the fringes of popular culture. Following on from the success of his 2013 thriller, Blue Ruin, the new movie is already riding on a wave of the positive critical response it received following its screenings on the 2015 film festival circuit, so it should be one to look out for when it arrives in cinemas later in 2016.
Release date
The Green Room UK release date has been confirmed for Friday the 13th May 2016, following on from the US release on the 1st April 2016, so it’s really gunning for the darker side of the date picking tracks. It initially had its premier at the 2015 Cannes International Film Festival on the 17th May 2015, which has given it enough time to pick up a fair amount of positive reviews with such a long lead-in time for the full release of the film.
The film be going out in the UK on the same weekend as the Angry Birds movie, so it could have decent release window to capitalise on at the box office. The only other competition will be from Richard Linklater’s sports comedy-drama, Everybody Wants Some, and Zach Braff’s heist comedy caper, Going In Style, so in terms of serious intent it should have the edge.
Story
The plot of the savage thriller is a simple case of a punk rock concert gone wrong – who hasn’t had at least a little experience of this in the past. Here it sees the band turning up and rocking the moojoo out of the ever-loving casbah only for murder to pierce the mayhem with shocking intent. With sadistic neo-Nazi’s running wild in the venue, the band is trapped inside the vortex of the savage attack and left at the mercy of onslaught as they barricade themselves inside the venue’s eponymous green room.
Green Room has been rated as an 18 by the British Board Of Film Classification with strong violence and gore, so you should expect things to get a little bit messy.
Cast
The cast is an odd, but cool mix that features Patrick Stewart playing Darcy the leading neo-Nazi skinhead hick spearheading the maniacal assault. His vicious, swastika-tattooed hoard includes Macon Blair, who also starred in Blue Ruin, but on the protagonist side of the battle lines, as well as Mark Webber (Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World).
The band mates are made up of Star Trek: Beyond‘s Anton Yelchin, who had a taste of the art-house direction in 2015’s Broken Horses, along with Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development), Callum Turner (currently starring in BBC’s War And Peace as Anatole Kuragin) and Joe Cole (A Long Way Down). The cast is rounded out by Imogen Poots (The Look Of Love, A Long Way Down), who plays Amber, a girl at the gig who gets caught up in the mayhem of the horror.
Production
The film is Jeremy Saulnier’s third movie release as both writer and director, putting him firmly in the autuer camp of critical assessment. You can follow the latest from the writer and director with Jeremy Saulnier’s Twitter updates. It has been produced by Neil Kopp, Victor Moyers and Anish Savjani, and executive produced by Gabriel Hammond, Daniel Hammond and Vincent Savino.
First impressions
With the critical acclaim of Saulnier’s last outing and what has already been a fairly decent reception following the Cannes premier, Green Room is shaping up to be one of the year’s big horror shouts, unconventional though it is. With a couple of Trekkers in the cast and such a bizarre setup for the story it could go on to be another cult classic in the making for the exciting director and writer.
If you’ve watched the trailer below and seen the May 13th release date, it looks to be an old reference to the Cannes premier, so refer to the UK and US dates above.
