- Directed by: Jeremy Saulnier
- Written by: Jeremy Saulnier
- Stars: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Patrick Stewart
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8XSARX3DQg
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This has plenty of horror elements, but it’s just bad people doing bad things to other people. Very bad things. When a band witnesses a murder, the situation gets out of hand as the baddies try to put a cap on it, and things keep getting worse as the heroes fight back. It gets messy and tension builds as things progress. We thought it was pretty great.
Spoilery Synopsis
Pat, Sam, Reece, and Tiger wake up in a cornfield where they ran off the road last night. They’re out of gas and have to ride a bike to civilization, where they siphon gas from some stranger’s car. They’re soon back on the road and arrive at Tad’s house, where they crash for a while.
Tad interviews the band; they’re not on social media and are hard to find. During the conversation, it comes up that Tad doesn’t have any serious work for them, so they end up playing at… a diner. They make $6.87 each for their work. Tad calls his cousin, Daniel, who can get them into a show tomorrow.
They arrive at the venue, the manager, Gabe, shows them around, and it’s not a classy place. The bar’s full of radical right-wing white supremacists, and the band are lefties who plan to sing anti-Nazi songs to the crowd. “Nazi Punks, Fuck Off!” is their first song. They get into regular music after that, and the crowd enjoys it.
On the way out, Pat goes back into the dressing room for a phone and finds a dead body on the floor; someone was stabbed. Pat tries to call the cops, but Gabe stops them. Gabe goes to the office and talks to Daniel, who pulls out $600 and pays one kid to stab his brother; that’ll give the cops something to deal with as the reason they were called, ignoring what went on inside.
Darcy, the club’s owner, arrives on the scene. He’s big on “damage control,” and wants to know who else knows the band was even here. He’s not happy about this whole situation.
Inside, the four band members, along with Amber, another girl, know they’re in deep trouble. They attack Big Justin, the guy who’s been holding them captive in the green room. They grab his gun. Outside, Darcy, Gabe, and Daniel make plans.
Darcy cuts the power, pretends there’s a problem, and sends the crowd of patrons home. Darcy talks to Pat through the locked door; he wants them to come out, and he’s very logical in his arguments. Pat and the band just want the cops to come, but they’ve come and gone.
Pat opens the door to give back the gun, senses a trap, and all hell breaks loose; both Pat and Justin end up with broken arms. Big Justin soon winds up dead.
Reece and Tiger break through the floor into the basement drug lab. That’s why Darcy is so eager to keep the cops out. They try the locked door, and it’s not only open, there’s no one watching the door. Is this a trap?
Yes. Trained dogs attack everyone. Tiger gets his throat ripped out, Reece gets captured and beaten, but Amber drives her dog off. Pat, Sam, and Amber run back to the green room. Darcy sends in Daniel with a machete to handle them and then learns that Daniel may have had the girl inside killed for a good reason.
Inside, Daniel knows he’s been caught and offers to help the three band members. He starts to show them another way out, but is soon killed along with Sam.
Pat and Amber talk about paintball, and Pat decides to distract the men coming for them by acting crazy. Their ploy works, and they overpower the two killers who come in after them.
Amber and Pat climb up out of the drug lab to find Gabe cleaning in the green room. Everyone else seems to have cleared out. Gabe may not be as bad as he seemed, willing to assist them now.
Pat and Amber find men in the woods who were disposing of their van. They find a whole staged crime scene that makes it look like the band was killed while stealing gas. They shoot Darcy and two other men.
Gabe walks to find some farmers and tells them to call the police. Pat and Amber, survivors, aren’t in the mood to talk about music anymore.
Brian’s Commentary
I’ve heard people say this was good, but otherwise, I went into it blind, having no idea what it was really about. It’s a non-stop rollercoaster of tension, and it’s pretty obvious all along that the heroes have no real chance of escape. After a while, I was starting to wonder what Darcy intended to do with all the dead bodies, as they were really starting to pile up. They staged a crime scene for the band members, but that didn’t explain all of his people who ended up dead.
It’s really good!
Kevin’s Commentary
It started right out with characters that seemed real and I cared about, which makes the situation they get stuck in all the worse to watch when the tension starts to build. The script and cast were very good, it was well directed. Patrick Stewart was perfect for the role, sensible, fatherly, and evil. I liked this one a lot.
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