The Ain’t Rights are a struggling punk rock band made up of singer Tiger (Callum Turner), bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin), guitarist Sam (Alia Shawkat) and drummer Reece (Joe Cole) who are living out of their van, which they siphon petrol for and live on favours and handouts so they take a gig from a friend of a friend in middle of nowhere roadhouse type venue populated by Skinheads and some white supremacists. True to their roots they antagonise the crowd with a rendition of the Dead Kennedys Nazi Punks F*ck Off and this peaks the tension all the way up to nine. Once they get through the set they want to beat a hasty retreat and are on the way out when they come across a situation where one of the supremacists has killed a young girl and together with the girls best friend Amber (Imogen Poots) they are locked up backstage until the situation can be sorted, and of course by sorted it’s in a ‘leave no witnesses alive’ way.

With nods to John Carpenters Assault on Precinct 13 and Sam Peckinpahs Straw Dogs, Green Room pulls no punches. The action is intense and bloody, the violence levels are extreme and it’s all played out to a soundtrack of loud, thrash metal and punk. As the situation escalates so do the extremes that the band needs to go to survive and it is this build from relative innocent musicians to killers which is the best facet in the movie as it shows just how some people are more than willing, some less so but all are emotionally tested in different ways and react to varying disturbing levels.

There is not much time given to the back story of the band members or the skinhead group but standing out are both Poots who is an apathetic badass and Patrick Stewart as Darcy, the owner of the establishment and leader of the group who play against type as cold, meticulous and evil but all done without barely a raised voice so it’s makes the performance even more chilling.

On the downside the final third of the movie is a little weaker, almost as if they were struggling to find a suitable ending but while it does diffuse the tension and mayhem of the earlier part of the movie a little it does not detract from what is a very enjoyable thriller excellently done on a reasonably small budget by director Jeremy Saulnier and as a whole the film is well worth a look. If it’s any indication of what this movie is all about, I can only say that it’s the first time in a long while where I have been in the cinema and one scene in particular gained a collective and very audible wince from the audience.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6.5 Out Of 10