Green Room

The Ain't Rights are a punk band surviving on fumes — literally siphoning gas from parked cars to keep their van moving across the country. When a contact books them a last-minute gig at a remote skinhead bar deep in the Oregon woods, they take it. They play a deliberately antagonistic set and get paid. They go back to the green room to collect their things and find a dead woman on the floor, a knife still in her neck.

They call for help. The wrong people come. Darcy Banker, the venue's owner, arrives with quiet authority and the clear intention of cleaning this up. The band — and Amber, a young woman who was already in the room — are locked in. The skinheads control the corridor outside.

The negotiation is brief and goes nowhere. What follows is a siege fought in tight spaces with box cutters, a machete, and a handgun that keeps changing hands. Darcy has attack dogs. He has time. He is methodical and unhurried in a way that is more frightening than rage would be.

The band is not equipped for this. They make mistakes. People die in ways that are ugly and unheroic. The film doesn't look away and doesn't score the deaths for effect.

The survivors fight their way out through the venue. Darcy is killed. Pat and Amber get into the woods — alive, in shock, the road somewhere ahead of them.