Green Room wasn't just one of the best movies I saw at last year's Midnight Madness. It wasn't just one of the the best movies I saw at the entire Toronto Film Festival. It was one of the very best movies I saw anywhere in 2015, and you're going to get your chance to see it very soon.
“But, wait, if it as so good, why wasn't it on your end of the year list?”
Basically, I got tired of people yelling at me that it was unfair when I put a film on my list that I'd seen at a film festival. Never mind that there are no formal rules for list-making, and never mind that they're always supposed to represent my film year and what I saw during a particular twelve-month-period. People got so hung up on it that this past year, I left off two films that are getting commercial releases in 2016, and now we'll get to see if they can find a spot on my year-end list with this year's competition.
A24's first trailer for Green Room is a spectacular look at what you can expect from the movie, and that creepy “Bad Moon Rising” cover works very well at setting a mood. It's funny… I wouldn't call Green Room a horror film, but they're leaning on some quotes that set that up as what you should expect. I think of it more as a character thriller, but it is almost unbearably tense at times.
More than anything, it establishes Jeremy Saulnier as the real deal, someone to watch as he moves forward as a filmmaker. I thought Blue Ruin was a solid, small revenge drama, but it didn't suggest something as ferocious as Green Room to me. He's got an amazing sense of action geography, and the way he makes use of the setting in Green Room is flat-out amazing.
New York and Los Angeles get the film first on April 15, and then it opens everywhere else on April 29. So lace up your Docs, pick a weapon, and get ready for the mayhem of Green Room. I promise… you will not be disappointed.