Green Room

It's always exciting to see a new wave cresting, and that's exactly what is happening at the moment with a handful of filmmakers who are skilfully blending relatively mainstream material with an indie sensibility that feels polished and accomplished but also uncompromising and individual.

I'm talking about Mud and Take Shelter's Jeff Nichols taking the next step up with the superb Midnight Special or Kill List's Ben Wheatley bringing his distinctive approach to his adaptation of J G Ballard's dystopian novel High-Rise.

American writer-director Jeremy Saulnier is one you can add to the list. He captured the attention of audiences with his understated but hard-hitting 2014 revenge drama Blue Ruin, and with his riveting thriller Green Room he kicks things up a notch.

It may not be as eloquently plain-spoken about the futility of violence as Blue Ruin was, but as a siege story pitting luckless innocents against ruthless adversaries it's as sharp as a switchblade.

The Ain't Rights, a small-time punk rock outfit on its last legs (the band's last gig earned its members six bucks each), gets an offer they can hardly refuse when a fan gives Pat (Anton Yelchin), Sam (Alia Shawkat), Reece (Joe Cole) and Tiger (Callum Turner) a shot at playing at a private club. A private club they discover is frequented by neo-Nazis.

Happily, the gig goes pretty well. Unhappily, when Pat ducks back into the club's backstage green room before leaving, he finds a dead body on the floor.

The disarmingly calm skinheads make a pretty convincing case that they just want to ensure no one else gets hurt - "We're not keeping you here, you're just staying," one tells the band - especially when avuncular leader Darcy (Patrick Stewart, inspired casting) shows up to set things right. Then, of course, the machetes, attack dogs and shotguns come out.

Saulnier knows how to use violence. He uses the threat of it to build tension, he uses explosions of it to break tension.

But it's not the only tool in his kit - he has a real facility for creating atmosphere (the locations feel utterly lived-in and real) and establishing relationships (the banter between The Ain't Rights is natural; the power dynamic of the neo-Nazi crew is well-defined), all of which adds up to an exercise in white-knuckle dread that's all the more powerful because the majority of the characters are simply but strongly defined.