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.
The Host (2006) may not be director Bong Joon Ho’s most acclaimed film, but it’s certainly the one that I find myself revisiting the most. At the time of its Cannes premiere in 2006, it was lauded for how effortlessly it handled both a mix of genres that make it hard to pin down and for how smoothly it delivered its social commentary. Beyond that, its dynamic directing and instantly iconic monster make a creature feature of a different caliber. 20 years later, it’s hard to say the film is anything but some of his best work, even against the impressive catalogue that Bong Joon Ho built up in the following two decades of cinematic excellence.
Among the likes of Best Picture winner Parasite, jaw-dropping crime thriller Mother, and even its much more popular creature-drama counterpart Okja, The Host stands as an incisive movie in Bong’s filmography that manages to cut right to the heart, even on rewatches. But what is it that makes it so endlessly effective, and so continuously cathartic, on every single watch through?
The Host, Real Life Ecological Horror, and Dirty Secrets
While kaiju films intertwined with ecological horror are nothing new (Godzilla as a franchise has revisited the well many times since vs. Hedorah in ‘71), The Host is one of the only kaiju films to succeed at really unsettling you with its subject matter. It has a verisimilitude that is undeniable, and the reason why is shocking: it’s actually inspired by a real-life story.
Before Shin Godzilla tackled the collapse of faith in civil authority, the dangers of bureaucracy, and the uncertainty of our ecological future, The Host was here to blend all of our contemporary fears into a thick slurry of sickening terror and add a dash of real-life depression to it. The movie is overtly inspired by the real-life McFarland Incident, in which a mortician named Albert McFarland, working at the U.S. Army’s Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, commanded a subordinate to dump 24 gallons of formaldehyde into the Han River rather than dispose of it properly.
The opening scene of the film is a recreation of this incident, overtly labeled the cause for the film’s monster, the Goemul, to mutate into what it does: a gargantuan, deformed, half-blind fish creature. What ensues from its birth is a harrowing few days in Seoul, as father Gang-du and his estranged family race to try and rescue his daughter Hyun-Seo from the creature. As the Park family’s search for its youngest member puts them on the path of opaque health officials and military hiding secrets about the creature, a clash between the public and the government begins to brew and threatens pure chaos.
Taking Large Scale Horror and Making It Personal in The Host
In the following decades since Bong’s heartbreaker kaiju born of pollution was put to the screen, the real life Yongsan Garrison painfully remains a symbol of ecological irresponsibility on the part of the American military. Its groundwater is saturated with insane amounts of carcinogens, nearly 30 times the permissible standard.
In the great knife twist of governments obscuring the truth, the status of forces agreement between the U.S. and South Korea gives them effectively carte blanche to dispose of chemicals without any sort of supervision or oversight, mainly for the sake of “keeping the peace”; it’s a dangerous and all too realistic parallel to the smokescreen the government uses in the film to keep the South Korean public in the dark, supposedly in the interest of public safety but more obviously in defense of optics.
There’s an ever present irony, and a hard to swallow misfortune in this fact, that makes the film’s biting commentary sting just a little worse and for much, much longer. As our delicate ecosystems hang in the balance, we live with a sword dangling above our heads; few still have hope that the powers that be can or even want to keep it from cutting us. That’s the real horror the film draws on, and it’s a soul draining theme that permeates it.
But amidst these large-scale societal fears that the script explores, Bong Joon Ho has added an emulsifier of sorts. One pivotal ingredient that takes the large-scale and makes it personal: a sense of alienation in everything. The way the film is structured, from how its characters are written, to how its narrative is split, to the very flow of hope and fear that it uses to pull at your emotions, relies on evoking a sense of alienation in the viewer.
A Cast of Characters Without a Country
Each of the characters within The Host is a man without a country. Each one alienated from the other, their estrangement is evoked for some very dry humor at times, but it’s a laugh that makes you cry. In what is possibly the film’s most overtly humorous scene, the Park family falling out and crying at the memorial service, Bong uses the physicality of the event and their clinging to one another before being torn back apart to represent the family’s irreparably divided nature. There’s a deep sickness of longing in the family, a sense of complete otherness from parent to child and sibling to sibling that is delved into as the characters progress throughout the film.
Our main character Gang-du, is the clearest example of a person who slipped through the cracks and simply ended up alienated from the entire world; he’s a child of poverty, malnutrition stunting his mental growth. Neglected by his father, he ended up resorting to picking around for scraps through the tradition of seo-ri, a type of subsistence by theft that becomes the film’s shorthand for the solitary nature of its characters.
Alienation and Family Trauma at the Heart of The Host’s Horror
His siblings both share this hunger, particularly Nam-il. Once a gifted student and political activist, it becomes clear later in the film that Nam-il has become alienated from his own political identity and sense of self. Becoming a cold and mean-spirited alcoholic, Nam-il has grown numb to hope for change as he is left behind by friends who have become part of the system he wanted to dismantle. Disillusioned by the state of government, Nam-il is consumed by nihilism and trapped in the very bottle he seeks escape through. Even the most accomplished of the siblings, Olympic archer Nam-joo, whom the family delights in watching, is alienated by virtue of becoming a symbol of her family and country’s success rather than being her own person.
A Camera That Embodies Separation
As the script puts together these characters consumed by alienation, Bong places them in the frame with the intention to make you truly feel their hopelessness and terror as the world falls apart around them. Bong favors wide shots of the cast, who often stand alone, contrasted against an encroaching threat. The close-ups he uses in conjunction with them are often uncomfortably intimate, reflecting the trapped state of the Park family, both emotionally and when physically endangered by the monster.
The Agent Yellow sequence is the film’s starkest example of this; each of the Park family being swallowed up by the rolling chemical cloud, scattered protestors starting to grow violently ill as they’re separated from their people. But if I had to hedge my bets on the most striking, it’s between two interspersed sequences: the scientists going to lobotomize Gang-du, and Hyun-seo’s daring escape attempt, which coincide at the end of the second act. They’re so radically different in just about every aspect, with Gang-du’s medical horror being bright and hauntingly sterile in its invasiveness; Hyun-seo’s prospective climb to freedom, mere feet away from the monster is caked in grime and masked in minimalist lighting.
Bong Joon Ho, The Maestro of Emotional Manipulation
But both of these scenes exemplify how masterful a filmmaker Bong truly is. After building up these tragic characters you feel dangerously close to and then placing them in nightmare scenarios, he’s able to get his hooks into you. The whole movie is filled with moments like this where Bong, through visual language and frame perfect editing, drags you up and down on an emotional rollercoaster.
He fills you with hope for the Park family and then shocks you with reveals that snatch your seat out from under you. By tapping into our own fears of the world and then placing us alongside characters whose fear of isolation compounds onto your own, Bong Joon Ho’s The Host stands as a film of true emotional power.
It’s a testament to just how truly moving and profound a horror film can be in the right hands, and of the way a genre film can be pushed to its absolute limits. Loneliness is a heavy weight to lay on the heart, and there are few films where it feels as heavy as The Host.
In May 2015, my father died. It wasn’t sudden, but it was difficult nonetheless. I had just moved to Rhode Island, no longer able to afford Boston. One evening that August, in the midst of my grief, I met up with a new friend I had made since moving to the Ocean State. We had bonded over our love of horror movies – the thrillers we loved, the new releases we did not, what we thought was missing from the genre. At some point, I thoughtlessly said, we should make our own horror movie.
So one fine Tuesday night, Brandon Perras-Sanchez picked me up to discuss this possibility. He shared an idea for a horror movie with me that he had with his friend, Christopher Dalpe. It started as an absurd riff on hookup apps. “Brandon and I knew we wanted to put a dick through a meat grinder,” says Chris. We picked him up and all drove to Ogie’s Trailer Park, a dive bar in Providence’s West End. As Brandon recalls, “our blood pact was made that night at Ogie’s.” That evening, we began building upon their ideas of what would become our first feature film, Death Drop Gorgeous.
I bring up my father’s passing because I think, in many ways, this project carried me through my grief. If you’ve watched Death Drop Gorgeous, this might be silly to read – that a John Waters meets 80s slasher drag queen exploitation film helped me process the loss of my father, but as Joni Mitchell once wrote, “laughing and crying, you know it’s the same release.” I’d find myself in cafes in Providence every weekend, writing pages and pages of what the three of us discussed, following our sticky note outline. Then, every week, we’d meet up and read the pages aloud. Brandon made it gorier. Chris made it wittier. We’d change scenes, switch the order, add more, delete less.
Go In, Completely Blind
In this process, we didn’t consider the road ahead. Prior to that, I had always been a type-A Virgo. I planned, I assessed, and I organized. None of us had shot a short film, never mind a full-length. Brandon had gone to school for some sound design, but he didn’t major in screenwriting or filmmaking. We didn’t bother ourselves with those trivialities. Letting go of that control and not considering what it would take to shoot a feature lent to our momentum. Maybe that naivety is in part the reason we finished it at all.
Building a DIY Horror Filmmaking Collective
At some point in pre-production, Brandon looped in his long-term friend, Wayne Gonsalves, to create a more realized character of Dwayne, and his partner, Ryan Miller, to help with finessing the story. We became a strange quintet, running around town, shooting scenes, figuring it out as we went along. No permit? No problem. (Not a joke, we’ve never got a film permit – not for lack of trying! They just never emailed us back.)
At some point, we realized we had to name ourselves. I think it was Chris who came up with “Monster Makeup”; it referenced our first feature: the drag, the gore, and special effects, but it also represented what we did: we made horror movies, we created monsters.
There were a lot of conventions we ignored. For me, this article is not only about reflecting on our work, but also about sharing our process. Like adulthood, there are milestones in a filmmaking career that you’re, allegedly, supposed to follow. I’m not insinuating they don’t help, but there are other ways to make your filmmaking dreams a reality.
The Coven Becomes a Collective
If you finish this article and remember any piece of advice, I want it to be this: if you’re going to shoot a DIY, shoestring-budget movie, you have to have community, and you must collaborate. No matter how intimate and personal your vision may be, filmmaking is inherently collaborative. As a collective, we had to shed our egos. Of course, over the decade, there have been a handful of disagreements, but we never saw our movies as these precious things that only one of us had the final say on.
Funding a Microbudget Horror Movie Through Local Support
Community is the reason our films exist. Death Drop Gorgeous was mostly set in nightlife, and most of us had been working in the bar scene for years. We knew the queens, the venues, what drew crowds and what didn’t. We called in favors to shoot a fake trailer. In addition to a crowd-sourcing campaign, to raise our budget, we also threw fundraising events from a drag show, to a (human) pup Best in Show, to an interactive murder mystery.
“Our projects would not exist without the immense support we received from our friends, family, and community,” says Chris. “Not just money. The spaces we’ve filmed (gifted and donated), the actors and talent (volunteers, many acting in front of a camera for the first time), costumes, makeup, pizzas for the crew – everything has been a labor of love from this weird village, and I’m eternally grateful.”
“We are forever indebted to our Providence family,” Brandon affirms. These films transformed from pipe dreams to community initiatives. As more folks joined our projects, the more it was helped along by others outside our core five. Our thank you speech could be its own feature-length. Somewhere along the lines, we convinced our city we were filmmakers, and eventually, we started to believe it, too.
Working With Your Community as Creative Inspiration
I emphasize collaboration and community because I think aspiring filmmakers feel limited by what they don’t have and not inspired by what they do have access to. We knew drag queens, we knew nightlife, we knew local music. It’s not just “write what you know,” it’s also “write what you have.” I also think some filmmakers have a sense of ownership of their work that doesn’t come from a place of pride but a place of possession. If you’re going to shoot a microbudget film, you need to learn when to take notes, and let others take the reins.
Trial-and-Error
What we learned in the previous film, we would apply to the subsequent project. Saint Drogo, our second feature, was an intentional shift. We lassoed in local photographer and musician Kevin Bowden (who scored a majority of Death Drop Gorgeous) to ensure a more visual spectacle. The quintet became a sextet. We wrote a leaner script without a B, C, and D plot. We wanted to explore another genre and demonstrate our growth. “Myself, and some of the other crew members, lean more towards dark, bleak, folk and fantasy horror,” says Brandon. “We really wanted to take a shot at it.”
While we didn’t want to limit the story, we did go into writing Drogo with the reminder of having undergone such a long production with Death Drop, which included an ensemble cast and numerous locations; we wanted to make filming more manageable for us. Sometimes, the pressure of limited setting or characters forces you to wrestle with the story, assess your resources, and really consider the necessity of scenes. In turn, producing more effective work.
Queen of the Rats and a Decade of Filmmaking Lessons
Our next feature, Queen of the Rats, feels like the culmination of what we’ve learned over the course of these ten years. It’s a meld of our first feature’s flippancy and chaos and the intentionality, cinematography, and nihilism of our second feature.
“I think you’re going to laugh,” says Chris of Queen of the Rats. “It’s a genuinely funny script with amazing characters. But there’s a lot of heart in it, and you might feel sentimental and nostalgic for a time and place that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“It’s even exceeding my own expectations,” notes Brandon. “I know every asshole in the biz will say ‘there’s really nothing like this,’ in regards to their own film, but in all sincerity, there really is nothing like this.”
Defining Success as a DIY Horror Filmmaker
Our method is not ideal for everyone. Sometimes, it’s not even ideal for us. Each project consumes a huge portion of our lives, with productions taking over two years, shot in between our day jobs, and we are still fundraising to make each one happen. But we’ve accomplished a lot and never let what we lack compromise the vision. What I am most proud of is our commitment. It’s also worth considering, however, what you as a filmmaker define as success. Sure, we have bigger dreams, but I still feel a great sense of fulfillment finishing these projects, like I’ve run a marathon.
All our lives have changed in the course of our collaborations. As Chris notes, “We’ve all grown up together. We’re a family, and these guys are my brothers. We’ve all changed jobs, boyfriends have come and gone. We’ve been to weddings and funerals together. We’ve watched the city that inspires our films change and transform…With each creative project we’ve taken on, our community and network has expanded, and it feels like our little creepy family just keeps getting bigger.”
“Being able to navigate through this dystopian pedophile pyramid scheme hellscape with a circle of some of your best friends is a blessing”, says Brandon. “There’s comfort and solace knowing that as our work/life balances wax and wane, our dedication, or addiction, to making horror films and content will always remain a sturdy axis.”
Why Queer Horror Stories Matter More Than Ever
Art carried me through the grief of losing my father. Horror helped me cope. These aren’t new, profound concepts, but something I want to highlight, especially given the current state of, well, everything. We need new voices in filmmaking. We especially need queer stories right now. As humans, we aren’t meant to withstand this much grief constantly. We’re going to need art to carry us through.
Monster Makeup is having a retrospective exhibit in Providence, RI, at AS220’s Aborn Gallery for the entire month of June. Opening reception is June 6th. On June 13th, we will be doing an artist talk at the Aborn Gallery and screening a preview of Queen of the Rats. Both events are free.
Final words of advice from the Monster Makeup crew:
“Make whatever you feel passionately about, no matter how successful it may or may not be. Letting that pass you by will always haunt you.” – Wayne Gonsalves
“Story matters. Whether you’re shooting with Richard Deakins or on an iPhone, if you don’t have a story, you’ve got nothing.” – Kevin Bowden
“Aim high. Make it work. Dedicate weekly time to writing, filming, whatever, and you do not stray from that schedule. Get creative. Do not compare your art to other art in a self-deprecating way. DO NOT GIVE A FUCK WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK.” – Brandon Perras-Sanchez
“Just get started, and you’ll learn by doing. Every mistake you make on set will just make you a better filmmaker. Utilize the resources within your community and its natural enthusiasm for filmmaking. It will only elevate your project many times over.” – Ryan Miller
“Follow people’s advice if you want to do what they’re doing. Follow your gut if you want to do something new. Regardless of which one you choose, do it with friends.” – Chris Dalpe
(Behind the scenes photos of Death Drop Gorgeous were taken by Chris Eastman. Behind-the-scenes photos of Saint Drogo were taken by Maxwell Snyder. All other photos by Kevin Bowden)
