Movie Review: Green Room

Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Writer: Jeremy Saulnier

Stars: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart

Verdict: Really good fun

In  a way I feel like this film has a kindred spirit in Drive, they’re both simple stories told with a visual style and panache with a degree of pathos and these huge explosions of violence. However where as Drive’s violence blossoms out like blooming flowers in the peak of spring, Green Room‘s violence hits you like sledgehammer. There are moments in Green Room that made me wince harder than anything in Drive. In Drive the violence has a degree of once removed detachment, a degree of exhibitionism that’s missing from Green Room. In Green Room it feels real. Director Jeremy Saulnier, (Blue Ruin, Murder Party), said in interviews that when he killed someone off he’d have to take a time out writing and it really feels like that. This film pulls no punches, when someone gets killed off Saulnier does not hold back in giving them an easy death, it is as it would happen. 

Pitching Green Room as what it is, a punks vs Nazis siege thriller doesn’t quite do it justice, it makes it sound more comical than it is. Now Green Room does a a vein of pitch black gallows humour running through it but the reason that works is to do with how straight it’s played, it works because the primary gear of Green Room is one of absolute hopelessness. It feels like people in absolutely no mental state to making such important decisions making important decisions badly, and the consequences come as they will. The only caveat being that this film seems to think duct tape is the answer to all medical issues. This atmosphere is aided by the cinematography which is filled with this sickly green lighting, even when the fame is flooded with warm yellows it has that David Fincher, (Gone Girl, Fight Club, Zodiac) washed out quality, so that the colour green infests everything in the film. 

It’s also aided by some fine performances is a great ensemble cast. Macon Blair who worked with Saulnier before on Blue Ruin and Murder Party, Blue Ruin he is quite incredible in, is one of the standouts. He lends his Nazi underling a real sense of humanity and pathos that really makes neither side feel like the hero. Patrick Stuart as the head of the facility our protagonists find themselves trapped in is really, really good. It does feel like his character was written for a deep south local with some of the syntax and dialects used but when Patrick Stuart does it he makes it sound almost ironic in a way that alternately really really works or really really doesn’t. By far my favourite characters though are our Punk band the ain’t rights. Imogen Poots who I liked so much in 28 Weeks Later gives a very different performance in a very similar film. Here she is threatening and dangerous and a complete bad ass in a way I quite like, although she isn’t a band member. The cast of the band are filled out by Anton Yelchin, (Star Trek), Alia Shawkat, (Arrested Development, Me Him Her), Joe Cole, (Peaky Blinders), and Callum Turner, (Victor Frankenstein). They are each distinct but believable characters, and each character does a very good job in portraying them. 

Green Room is a claustrophobic horror/thriller that will have you both on the edge of your seat and cowering behind a blanket. I really like it, if you’re into grizzly exploitation films then you probably will too, I mean it’s hard to convey just how good and believable the gore effects are, in a way that will make you feel very uncomfortable. I give it two hearty thumbs up. 

I suppose all that’s left to say is that Anton Yelchin is really good in this film. He bestows his character with a sense of empathy and desperation mature beyond his years. He was set to be a Hollywood superstar, and a very interesting actor. An enthusiastic interviewee and a great Chekov who clearly loved every moment he was portraying the character. He leaves a whole in the movie industry and was taken too young. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone and I am still saddened thinking of Anton. Rest in Peace friend, you go with everyone’s respect. 

Movie Review: The Girl With All The Gifts

Director: Colm McCarthy

Writer: Mike Carey

Stars: Gemma Arterton, Glenn Close, Paddy Considine, Sennia Nanua

Verdict: You should see it

I suppose it’s only apropraite that from such a huge horror fan, my first review of a current release would be a horror film written on 1st October. Hm, how cliche. This film however is anything but. 

It was hard to decide how to open my review of The Girl With The Dragon… wait no, The Girl with All the Gifts, hereby to be referred to as TGWATG because typing is work I don’t care if I do this for free. The reason it was hard to decide how to begin it was because there’s so much to talk about with TGWATG, (see it works so smoothly). First off can I just say, leave it to the British to make a proper young-adult film. Young adult doesn’t mean 12 year-olds editor’s of The Hunger Games, zombies are actually meant to be fucking terrifying, not a gimmick, producers of The Scorch Trials. If one was to look at the back catalogue of director Colm McCarthy, the researcher would see a menagerie of high quality, visually interesting, and otherwise interesting television, such Hustle, Spooks, Ripper Street, Doctor Who, Endeavour, Sherlock, and my favourite series of Peaky Blinders. Indeed, he’s set to go back to television, currently working on the pre-production for made-for-tv Superman flick Krypton. Infact he seems like the perfect choice, the issue with later day superman movies has been that they fundamentally havn’t understood how to properly use the character’s it’s dealing with whilst aping after previous iterations. Now if there’s one thing I can say about TGWATG it’s that it understands the history of the sub-genre of zombie flicks whilst also doing something fresh, new, and exciting with it.

The film starts with a very striking sequence of our teenage main character, in some militaristic, metallic, and sickly green chamber being woken up, then proceeding to restrain herself, before being taken to a lesson in which she says, “but there isn’t anything bad here”. To say anything more about the plot would definitely be a spoiler. 

I went in actually with quite low expectations. Ever since Let the Right One In, we’ve seen a slew of lesser movies trying to do the same thing of taking a horror monster and making a drama about them, like Maggie, and TGWATG had all the hallmarks of one of those. I mean, all the best horror movies of latter days like The Babadook or It Follows are also dramas, they entice you in with dark character development so that you identify with them properly, and this film is luckily of that ilk, maybe not of that quality, but definitely of that type of movie, not the former type. 

The film is impeccably directed, most of the film takes place amongst green, red is on the other end of the colour wheel so blood really takes on a striking quality and fills out a rich colour palate. The director takes full advantage of this, with an orange jumper, or red doors, drawing your eyes to the important things. Speaking of blood, there’s actually a lot of proper body horror here, I mean zombies themselves I feel come from the body horror tradition of Videodrome, The Fly, or The Thing, but it doesn’t shy away from the realities of the situation in the way that the first The Hunger Games did. These effects are all done, for the most part, in camera with practical effects without cuts, and this isn’t for style I think, it’s to sell the moment. The biggest example is the climax to the first and best act which has one of the most exciting and riveting long take set pieces I’ve seen for a while, like it does one, and then immediately one ups it. It’s not style for style’s sake, these long takes are there so that you can see everything and believe it’s happening and it’s great, I love it. 

Now this is definitely not perfect. The score is really interesting, I liked it for the first 5 minutes, actually I loved it for the first 5 minutes, after which it got a bit irritating. The first act is by far the best and although the other two have their moments the horror elements take a back seat and it rides dangerously closely to a Maggie type thing, and the ending left a bad taste in my mouth, it might be meant to leave a bad taste, or the filmmakers might actually believe this is a proper resolution. There are clues that the filmmakers know but it’s ambiguous and I can’t tell if I like that or not. I mean the filmmakers would probably love that I’ve had this reaction to the ending, but it just irritated me a tad. 

The acting is lovely, Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction), Paddy Considine (Peaky Blinders, Macbeth, The World’s End), who I love, and the lead, Sennia Nanua, are all very good but can sometimes come across as a bit stock character. However, the real gem in the film is Gemma Arterton who up until now is best known for schlock like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Clash of the Titans, and Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig’s worst Bond movie, now I love me some schlock but like good schlock if such a thing exists. However, in this film, she is quite outstanding, has an air of the Emily Mortimer, (Hugo, The Newsroom) about her, she owns the screen whevever she’s on it but not by cutting an imposing figure, it’s through just being really really real. 

The Girl With All The Gifts (give me a break about the acronym thing it’s the conclusion) is an exciting step forward for the zombie sub genre and sets Colm McCarthey up perfectly to take his place amongst the league of great film directors who rose from impressive TV work like Ken Loach, (Kes, I, Daniel Blake, The Wind That Shakes the Barley), and Ben Wheatley, (Kill List, Sightseers, High-Rise), who actually also in his career made some episodes of Doctor Who. It’s really worth checking out if anything just so studios who seem obsessed with profit can see the success of an actual young adult Young Adult film.

Thoughts on new trailer for Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire

Let’s get one thing clear; I love Ben Wheatley. (High-Rise, Sightseers, Kill List). I haven’t seen many of his films mainly because I saw Kill List when I was far too young and it pretty much traumatised me, the image of I-think-Micheal-Smiley-but-I-Haven’t-Rewatched-The-Film-Yet-So-I’m-Not-Sure taking off the bandage of an infected would has really stayed with me, but on reflection, I don’t think my at-the-time hatred of Kill List was right, I think the film was doing exactly what it was meant to do. The film starts off almost as a dark comedy, in the way that the ‘funny how’ scene in Goodfellas is kind of funny, but the film slowly spills over into horror, and it’s bloody terrifying, the atmosphere is almost mephitic. and then last year High-Rise came out and I thought that I’d give Ben Wheatley another chance. Now I didn’t love it but I liked it and it stayed with me, and then I re-watched it, and liked it a whole lot more. 

I think at the end of the day, I like the idea of Ben Wheatley, he makes uncompromising, interesting genre films that show interesting people. He works in this interesting hole between horror and comedy in a completely different, more straight faced, more scary in the ‘this will eat away at you’ sense than someone like Sam Raimi, (The Evil Dead, Drag Me to Hell). This new film looks not different, and banterous gangster flick it seems no surprise to see Martic Scorcese, (Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, The Wolf of Wall Street) attached as it looks something the now-legend would have directed in his younger days, I’ve already referenced that Wheatly may have been influenced by Scorcese before, although I’d point more to someone like Ken Russel, (The Devils, Women in Love, Altered States), or in something like High-Rise, something like Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, a film which Wheatley himself has professed to loving .

I almost universally already like the cast, I was one of the few non-gamer defenders of Sharlto Copley film Hardcore Henry, and District 9 is a fine piece of work. Armie Hammer is great in The Social Network and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and this film looks like a perfect vehicle for his charismatic charms after the turgidity of The Lone Ranger, (and I have a fond affection for the TV show). Brie Larson is the obvious star attraction, in true hipster fashion I havn’t seen her Oscar winning performance in Room but my mum and sister tell me it’s fabulous, I have however seen her in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and she’s fabulous in that too. However the real attraction for me here in Cillian Murphy who I have never disliked in a film. From Batman Begins to 28 Days Later… to Peaky Blinders, this man is a real acting talent, who is just on the fringes of stardom but must one day take his pedestal amongst the great pantheon of British acting talent, alongside the likes of Gary Oldman, or Toby Jones. 

It seems after the high sheen of something like High-Rise, Ben Wheatley is ready to play with the big boys with this muscular, gun driven action comedic thriller, and I personally can’t wait.