In a nutshell, it's about a punk band trapped in a neo-Nazi club. No one wants to kill anyone, but both sides are forced to kill each other because of tragic circumstance. The neo-Nazis started it, though.
The violence is jaw-droppingly brutal. It's hard to get a jaded contemporary audience to wince, but this one brought the house down several times. Just- OUCH!!!
I would be in awe of this film even if I knew nothing about who made it, but full disclosure- I am hopefully biased in its favor. It's directed by a fellow who grew up down the street from me and characters in the film are named after beloved friends.
My mommy says that director Jeremy Saulnier's mommy babysat me at his house when I was little, but I have little to no memory of this (other than Jeremy cutting a TV out of a cardboard box and pretending to be on television- he was always a visual artist!).
I do remember meeting Saulnier a couple times in the mid-90's. He had a detached vibe and fifty-yard stare, but was still friendly and cool with dumb little me. His band, No Turn on Fred, was a heavy, hilarious "ice metal" band. Their band name was based on the best-selling "No Turn on Red" signs you sometimes see at intersections. One such sign in particular was tagged in our neighborhood- at a fairly major intersection- with an "F" in front of the "Red." That elegant bit of graffiti stayed up there for years, somehow.
What I didn't know is that the guy was also making backyard gore epics with his home movie camera. I was secretly doing the same! Though I think he was more persistent and took his work a wee bit more seriously than me.
But to my credit- back home and back in the day, I did work at the greatest video store in the history of the world. (I'm no stranger to hyperbole, but believe me- I'm serious here.)
Video Vault.
See kids, before Netflix- we had these things called video stores. History lesson over.
Video Vault was unlike any of those tiny little shops in strip malls, though. This place was a three-level townhouse with a room for every genre. And most great directors had a section set aside for their movies- Scorsese, Truffaut, Romero, Kurosawa, and a pre-Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson.
I was a horror nut as far back as I can remember and before Video Vault, I had to scour independently-owned stores all over the metropolitan area looking for cool and rare horror and cult films. (Never at Blockbuster, though- that place was always pretty weak on selection of cinema bizarro. Good riddance.) You'd score maybe a small handful of gems at each store. It gave you that primal rush of being a hunter/gatherer.
But Video Vault was the place that consolidated every wonderful and impossible-to-find horror movie under one roof. One-stop shopping. They not only had a "Horror" room, but also a "Cult" room, with every conceivable deranged, uncategorizable film you could ever hope to see.
This place was legend.
Our customers were the best. They loved film and loved talking film. We had a revolving door of delightful and interesting characters and memorable encounters with minor celebrities, all of which I would get sued for recounting.
Video Vault also graduated some pretty impressive talents. Obviously, there's Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier- who I can't confirm but strongly suspect learned a lot from the Vault. There's also Jack Bennett, who produced countless great short films and online shows, then directed this Anthrax video, which is probably the grossest thing I've ever seen. (And I've seen some pretty gross stuff.) And Zach Clark has directed several dark, brilliant, and moving films including Modern Love is Automatic, White Reindeer, and the currently-in-festivals Little Sister.
Zach was a co-worker, Jack was a customer, but their names rhymed, so they were equal in my eyes. I no longer have Jack's 2001 short film where he blew his brains out on a Kermit poster, but I do still have all of Zach's high school movies on VHS. Shut Up and Get Functional, A Bad Day for Juan, Citizen Spleen, Frankenstein, Spungville Confidential, you name it. (He's probably gonna burn my house down to keep anyone from getting their hands on these classics.)
To this day, when I meet a serious film fan and casually mention that I once worked at Video Vault- as a God-like Assistant Manager, no less!- grown adults get childishly giddy as they wax poetic about how much they loved that place. It left a mark.
Video stores are extinct. A few of them are still kicking around out there- especially in Alaska and Texas and other places without Internet- but they're mostly curious relics of a pre-Internet age.
That's fine. Their time came and went. Such is life. The only one I was really sad to see go was Video Vault in 2010. (Their website still exists, amazingly.)
Much like Eric Roberts, it was the best of the best.
(Update- CONFIRMED HERE, Saulnier gives Video Vault props.)
-Phony McFakename
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