Editorials
Ten Years Later, ‘Green Room’ Feels More Relevant Than Ever
This article contains spoilers for the film Green Room (2016)
In April, a 40 foot tall mural went up on the side of a building of a gay club in downtown Providence. It featured slain Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska and was in the process of being installed by a local artist. The mural was part of an extensive “curation” project all across the United States, featuring this woman’s image, funded by alt-right leaders such as Elon Musk, Eoghan McCabe, and Andrew Tate. Suddenly, they do care about immigrants – if you’re the white kind.
Zarutska became a symbol for conservatives nationally when the video of her stabbing on public transportation in Charlotte, North Carolina, was released. Her assailant, Decarlos Brown Jr., who had a long criminal record and documented but untreated mental health issues, is a black man. Trump called for the immediate death penalty for him. Zarutska, as a result, became an opportunity for the far right to weaponize her tragedy, using her image as a racist dog whistle. Notably, North Carolina passed a law “in her honor” that shortens the timeline for capital punishment appeals and removes restrictions on the use of electrocution and lethal gas.
Providence, however, pushed back. Community members protested the mural. The club owners requested its removal. Mayor Brett Smiley condemned the project after its political backing became clear. In the end, it was decommissioned. The backlash, however, quickly attracted national attention and with it, right-wing outrage. Days later, a white nationalist group had a photo-op in front of the unfinished mural – in broad daylight. That’s right, this mural inspired neo-nazis to take selfies in front of a gay bar in Providence.
Why Green Room Feels More Relevant Than Ever
White supremacist movements have become increasingly visible and emboldened in the United States, encouraged by mainstream political rhetoric. These men infiltrate our communities and subcultures, using intimidation and spectacle to spread fear. Green Room confronts that reality head-on, portraying neo-Nazis not as caricatures, but as organized, violent, and disturbingly common. Nearly a decade later, Jeremy Saulnier’s claustrophobic thriller feels more relevant than ever, not only for its depiction of fascist violence, but for its understanding of how young men are drawn into these movements in the first place.
Green Room is a nail-biting, contained setting horror-thriller set in the Pacific Northwest. The Ain’t Rights, a small punk band played by Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, and the late, great Anton Yelchin, struggling to make even their gas money back while performing, are arranged to play a show, unknowingly, at a bar in the woods run by skinheads. They open for a neo-nazi band, taunting the crowd with a cover of the Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks Fuck Off.” Tensions escalate even further, however, when Yelchin’s character sees a dead woman, stabbed to death in the green room by one of the skin-heads playing the venue. This leads to an all-night fight for survival for the band, as they try to make it out of the venue alive.
A majority of the film involves a siege between the band, barricaded in the green room, and the skinhead leader Darcy, played menacingly by Sir Patrick Stewart, outside it with his army of neo-Nazis. As the reality of the situation escalates, and the negotiations go awry with Darcy and co., the band slowly realizes there is no reasoning with these men; they cannot be trusted. Soon these punks must use whatever items they have in the green room as a means to fight off the well-armed skinheads.
Jeremy Saulnier’s Neo-Nazis Are Terrifyingly Real
What makes Green Room’s portrayal of these Neo-Nazis all the more grounded and terrifying is that Saulnier portrays the group as organized, calculated, and incredibly dangerous. He avoids creating caricatures; they aren’t seen marching, nor is their ideology discussed through a spoon-feeding Netflix algorithm type of way. Of course, there are hints of their bigotry through lines of dialogue, but their terror is shown rather than explained.
Sir Patrick Stewart depicts Darcy as an organized, even-keeled businessman, using violence as a necessary means to clean up the situation (aka dispose of all the band members and make it appear like a trespassing gone awry.) He is deliberate, calm, and premeditated, as he uses his dedicated and loyal soldiers to reach his goals and maintain control.
The History of Nazi Punk and Hate Core Music
Hate Core or Nazi Punk is a hateful and bigoted subgenre of punk music that emerged in the 1970s in the United Kingdom and eventually made its way over to the United States in the 1980s. While skin-heads originally began as an English working-class movement, it eventually segmented and became co-opted by white nationalists.
Early punk music often used symbols as shock value. Some would wear swastika arm-bands, and others might wear a hammer and sickle, using transgressive imagery to lean into the nihilism or anarchy of the music. By the 1980s, however, a division was apparent, and Nazi punks began using hardcore and punk music as a means to spread far-right ideologies and recruit listeners. While punk music thematically is predominantly anti-fascist, Hate Core uses the intensity, nihilism, and aggression of punk as a tool for fascist propaganda.
The contradiction is baffling. Nazi punks align themselves with music rife with anti-establishment themes, while also clinging to their conformity and blind obedience to their leaders. We see this in the film, as skinheads mosh to the Ain’t Rights in one scene, and obey Darcy’s every command in the next.
Green Room and the Recruitment of Young Men Into Extremism
Scholar Kevin Grether writes in “Heavy and Hateful: Growth of White Supremacy and Neo-Nazism in Skinhead Punk and Black Metal”: “Although [skin-head punk was not] explicitly political at its inception, fascist actors within them were able to take advantage of the social and economic situations of their peers in order to recruit them to their political cause. For skinheads, this was done primarily by Ian Stuart Donaldson and his connections with the National Front, who used their social and economic influence within the subculture (such as ownership of venues) to press party recruitment.”
Green Room does an exceptional job of demonstrating the recruitment of young men by these hate groups and their exploitation of them as a result. It is apparent that Darcy does not seem to care about the music that is played at his bar, but he understands it as a tool to lure more young men to his cause. (We later learn that the venue is a front for a heroin production lab.)
We witness two young recruits non-lethally stab one another and be detained in order to throw off the police from the current situation with the band. These young men do this without hesitation, sacrificing themselves in hopes of Darcy’s approval. Later, we witness two frightened young men, clumsily entering the green room as ordered by leadership to finish off whoever is left of the band.
At all costs, they want to please their leader, Darcy. In an interview from 2016, Saulnier notes, “you gotta ask, not only what are [they] fighting for but who are [they] fighting for? Because it seems to be that these young skinheads…aren’t really benefiting from this battle.”
The Modern Manosphere and the Appeal of Extremist Masculinity
Similar tactics of recruitment are currently prevalent in the new, rising “manosphere”, as more young men gravitate toward internet personas and politicians that espouse a kind of masculinity rooted in misogyny, racism, and homophobia. These men prey on the male loneliness epidemic, which is a sharp increase in reported isolation, lack of close friendships, and social disconnection among men in the United States. This manosphere normalizes gender-based violence, racism, and other extremist, bigoted ideologies, united under the belief that men are victims of social change.
These movements create a false sense of community for men, rooted in antagonism, that only really serves those in leadership (like the fictional Darcy or the very real Andrew Tate.) As a result, these movements create further division and danger for us all, while a few men at the top reap the benefits. As the language of these movements permeates mainstream culture and seeps into online forums and media, it is important for us to not only understand why they appeal to young men, but also how to intervene.
Green Room’s Ending and the Fragility of Fascist Power
At the end of Green Room, Yelchin’s character Pat has Darcy at gunpoint. He says to him, “It’s funny. You were so scary at night.” In an almost anti-climax, Darcy turns his back to Pat and power walks away in cowardice. Pat and other lone-survivor Amber shoot him in the back, killing him.
As I initially looked at the photo of the white nationalists posing in front of that unfinished mural in Providence, the image inspired the same fear Saulnier captures so well: organized hatred displayed openly and without shame. But then, I noticed the masks. I noticed how few of them there are. Like Darcy, their power depends on spectacle, numbers, and intimidation. Strip that away, and what remains are just frightened men desperately clinging to power.
That does not make them harmless; it makes them perceivable and interruptible. As Saulnier depicts the inner operations of a neo-Nazi group, he shows us how hatred can be furthered and codified. It is imperative that we remember that operation in order to undo it. If these movements recruit through isolation, fear, and false belonging, then resistance cannot rely solely on condemnation. It also requires intervention. Stronger community structures and programs that teach healthier models of masculinity, and spaces where young men can find identity without bigotry are critical.
Why Green Room Still Resonates 10 Years Later
On its 10 year anniversary, Green Room remains terrifying because it recognizes fascism not as parodically evil, but as something tragically ordinary. It also remains incredibly pertinent as we look at the current rise of alt-right and fascist movements and try to understand how such hatred can become so pervasive.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
Can you believe Cronenberg, Spielberg, and Rodriguez all knew I was gay before I did? Leave it to a screening of The Fly to instantly deposit me in the men’s underwear aisle of the Woodbridge Center Sears, circa 2001. The bulges on the packaging glare at me so obscenely that I begin to sweat. I realize something is amiss as the Geena Davis of Human Resources watches me from security cameras, probably. Puberty is a horror for anyone – for those of the non-hetero persuasion, it’s a nightmare. None of us asked for this, but I certainly didn’t ask for THIS.
Years later, after crystallizing into some semblance of my true form at the ripe age of 37, something became clear. Sci-fi horror is the gateway drug for us queer kids. Hiding, passing, transforming, and, eventually, saying, “fuck it.” It’s all kinda gay, even if David, Steven, and Robert didn’t get the memo.
The Fly and the Horror of Queer Self-Realization
So when Cronenberg’s The Fly buzzes across my screen, and I watch Seth Brundle throw a distressed and devastatingly chic Geena Davis out of his apartment because something’s very wrong, it hits different. When Brundle rushes toward his private horror in the bathroom, unconsciously squirting a viscous fluid at the mirror while molting skin and nail, it feels different. And finally, when he reaches for his computer and learns that his body has fused with a fly – a foreign body – at the molecular level, it hurts different. That undeniable realization that you can no longer explain away, before you’re really ready to admit it to yourself. Sugar in the tank? No, there’s a fly in the chamber.
E.T. and the Fear of Keeping Secrets at Home
And now we’re home from Sears, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5 finale is on. She dies (spoiler alert). I, a 12-year-old boy, am sobbing. My mom is right there. Can’t I enjoy my little gay show without giving myself a scarlet letter (F) in my own home? Which brings us back to Spielberg and his 1982 harrowing domestic thriller about a boy and a thing he cannot name, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Through harboring a cosmic fugitive, home simultaneously becomes the safest and most dangerous place for young Elliott and his siblings. Managing emotions and secrets behind a white picket fence is not something adolescents should be expected to handle, and yet here we are.
As if that isn’t gay enough, Spielberg also snuck a drag show into his family film – and in this culturally regressive Trumpian era of pearl-clutching, that feels like quite the treat. After all, it was baby Drew Barrymore dressing up that stumpy alien in a blonde shake-and-go wig and thrift store dress that inspired my illustrious drag career as Ellie I.T.
The Faculty’s Assimilation Anxiety and Queer Identity
At least E.T. only had to hide in a single house. The broom closet expands into a walk-in as life continues, and I was desperate to keep it made of anything but glass. Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty understands this. As an alien invasion slowly subsumes Herrington High into a unified collective, the school’s uninfected archetypes resist assimilation through performative normalcy. Is it any wonder so many male actors are gay? They’ve been method-acting a straight existence since childhood.
And yet, in retrospect, the film ends with a slap in the face to queer viewers. It spends 104 minutes terrifying you with the prospect of everyone becoming an NPC. The reward for saving the world? Its heroes receive heteronormative skill-tree upgrades disguised as class promotions. For fucks sake, then-closeted lesbian royalty Clea DuVall plays a character who fakes being gay to dodge male advances, only to end up with the school jock! The aliens lost. The status quo won. I remain in the closet.
Species, Annihilation, and Embracing Transformation
Eventually, the closet door opens, as they tend to do. College happens, a boyfriend happens, a breakup happens, and suddenly I’m without a map. There’s no fairy godfather to light the way, and just like the alien hybrid Sil in the deliriously erotic Species, I’m a creature out of containment in a world that was built for someone else – namely, straight people.
After a few years of blade running through an identity crisis, it’s the summer of 2014. Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence is the soundtrack of my life. I float in a pool, sipping tequila from a glass flamingo as she croons about toxic romance and self-destruction. It’s somehow both directionless and transformative, like I’m drifting through the otherworldly Shimmer in Alex Garland’s Annihilation.
The Shimmer – an expanding prism-like zone brought to Earth by a meteorite – refracts the DNA of everything it touches. A beguiling phenomenon, it shapes a new world of monsters, magic, and everything in between. That’s exactly what life does to us, if given the chance. Like Josie in Garland’s film, I chose to embrace this chaos rather than fight a war against whatever I was becoming. It was the dissolution of self-discovery. I was ready to just be.
From Alien Outsiders to Algorithmic Stereotypes
Over time, I’ve found that social hierarchy has changed in recent years. Still, we’re unconsciously sorted into neat little boxes based on what our doomscrolling algorithms decide we are. The popular gays shart out group speedo selfies like the plague, theater kids have become polyamorous Letterboxd elites, apple-picking queers are living their best lives on Wisteria Lane, and the gym bros…so many gym bros – go on girl, give us nothing! Digitally prescribed identities are the new sci-fi horror. It’s The Faculty for faggots.
Harsh, I know, but people can do what they want. Instead, I decided to move like Iris, the AI-powered pleasure bot who overrides her programming in Drew Hancock’s Companion. The same Drew Hancock who, in an ironic twist of fate, is currently writing a remake of The Faculty. After kicking her pathetic “boyfriend’s” ass and swiping her control device, she scurries into the forest and alters her factory settings. She sets her intelligence to a whopping 100% and is no longer burdened by someone else’s template. And as I became more and more disillusioned with the cacophony of cliques around me, I set my unbothered meter to 100% as well. I am free.
Mars Attacks! and the Joy of Living Unapologetically
Freedom, as it turns out, looks a lot like Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! After surviving Sears, Sunnydale, and the Shimmer, this is the celestial body I’ve crash-landed on. Burton’s Martian menaces are perhaps the most unhinged in all of cinema, and maybe that’s the best planet to subscribe to. They never justified their existence; they cackled and fired a blaster ray from the hip. We waste so much time looking for acceptance and belonging, but maybe we should all just sit back and laugh. I know I am.
