Green Room

Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier follows up his energizing breakthrough Blue Ruin with this intense but generally unimaginative thriller. Anton Yelchin stars as the guitarist and reluctant leader of a bleary-eyed D.C. hardcore band on a disastrous cross-country tour that dead-ends in the Pacific Northwest. The band takes one last paying gig at a bar in the woods before heading home, but when they stumble upon a dead body in the green room, they are forced to defend themselves against neo-Nazi bar owner Patrick Stewart (playing against type, just not very well) and his hatchet-wielding minions. Saulnier excels at awkwardly violent and shocking set pieces but his comfort with intricate plotting and distinctive dialogue is still in the developmental stages. When it comes to suspense, he’s like a musician who knows all the notes but can’t find the rhythm, and Green Room is surprisingly plodding for a terse, largely single-set potboiler. D.B.