Green Room is sure to go down as the most overwhelmingly intense movie of 2016, and unless another filmmaker can match Jeremy Saulnier’s knack for suspense, violence, and pulling the rawest performances out of his actors possible, it’ll reign as genre-movie king for a good long while.

Starring Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Blue Ruin‘s Macon Blair, and Patrick Stewart, the film finds a hardcore band trapped in the green room of a secluded punk rock venue in the forested Northwest, surrounded and outnumbered by murderous neo-nazi thugs led by a cunning leader (Stewart). Over the course of one night, blood and limbs fly, bones break, flesh gets ripped to shreds, and egoes get smashed to pieces as we bear witness to the ensuing melee.

In a roundtable interview, we spoke to Saulnier and Yelchin in San Francisco about the movie, which is in theaters now.

Murder Party was also primarily shot in one location. That was shot about a decade ago. I’m curious how you’ve approached Green Room differently and how you’ve applied the things you’ve learned over the past ten years.
Jeremy: After Murder Party, which is an overnight, sort of contained scenario, I swore I’d never do it again. So…I’m an idiot. I learned a lot about what’s supposedly cheapest and most convenient, which is shooting a film in one location so that you have control over it. But, cinematically, I found it lacking. I was using a great steadycam operator and kind of set him loose, but I didn’t feel like it was fully realized, visually and cinematically.

For Blue Ruin, I did the opposite: tons of locations, open air, eight-page scenes. That was what I was attracted to. Green Room was just an idea I loved but was resisting because of the nature of what it contained. The siege scenario. But I felt like, because of the dynamics of it taking place in the green room of a concert venue during a live show, it was just something I couldn’t let go of.

Visually, I had an exterior element that was kind of swirling and always moving, very visually rich and kinetic. Inside, I had had to work on how to cover these scenes without exhausting the actors. I didn’t quite figure that out because you had to get these performances and you couldn’t be so kinetic. Green Room is much more visually precise and better realized. I wasn’t afraid. When we had to lock a camera and just shoot what the actor was saying, the impact of the performance is what’s really driving the story, not so much how I use the camera. We let the actors lead the way.

You’ve been DP on all of your films until now. What was it like passing on the torch and focusing on directing?
Jeremy: Based on the necessity of this production, it was easy and kind of inevitable. For Blue Ruin, it’s a kind of quiet film. There are about three major dialogue scenes, and the rest is primarily wordless. Every shot was the story. My intuitive approach to how I was moving the camera and how I was framing the camera is how I told the story. I couldn’t do it any other way.

Green Room, with the ensemble cast, the stunts, the bloodwork, the special effects…it was way more of a challenge than Blue Ruin. I wasn’t going to try to shoot this. Sean Porter was brought on because he has a diversity of styles. He isn’t trying to put his imprint on a director’s film. He tries to translate what they’re going for. I saw It Felt Like Love and Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter, which are very different films, and I would never peg them as being shot by the same person. For that reason, I knew that he could translate the visuals as I would have.

I love following your career, Anton. Your role choices are interesting to me. I don’t know you, but from everything I’ve heard, you’re an incredibly intelligent person.
Anton: That’s debatable…[laughs]

I think you exude a keen intellect when you’re onscreen. Do you choose roles that allow you to display that?
Anton: The thought just crossed my mind that I should find someone really stupid to play. [laughs] I think at this point I want to be doing different kinds of characters and changing physicality…It’s hard, because movies don’t really come out in order. Sometimes they never come out. So work that [I] do that in my mind I’m plotting my…not so much career trajectory, but my creative trajectory…a lot of times, people don’t get to see that. Something that I may have done three years ago may come out tomorrow, and three years ago I was on that creative page, but I’m not anymore! You get judged by that moment. For me, at this point, I’m trying to figure out what I can do creatively. It’s about trying to find new things and trying to figure out voices and borrowing from things and learning as much as possible so that I have an archive of things to borrow from.

Jeremy: I can attest to the fact that he is an overthinker. He gave me a huge phone book of notes about his character, not to change the script, but just his insights and how he would steer the character, emotionally. That I loved. Anton has a very good idea of what he wants to do, and he wants to talk about it a lot. Sometimes I want to, you know…

Anton: Not talk about it. [laughs]

Jeremy: This film is so physical. The dialogue, if you look at it line by line…it’s like, what are we saying here? It’s all kind of throwaway. But when you see the character, he’s not very proactive. He’s forced to live or die. He’s not trying to be a cinematic movie hero. He’s forced into that role and has to go kind of full-gonzo to get there. It’s really fun to see it come alive on camera.

Anton, are you the kind of actor who needs to be riled up before a tense scene? This film is obviously full of them.
Anton: It’s just focus. I know Jeremy’s really busy, but I send him all of that stuff. It’s a selfish thing. I need what I’m thinking to come out into the world, even if it’s a two-word approval, like, “Yeah, I agree,” I need that approval so that in the morning I can get up and use that when I go to work. It’s a weird version of focusing. That being said, it’s not just me focusing. I was thinking a lot about Callum and [Imogen] and Alia and Joe, watching those guys. Patrick Stewart on the other side of the door. When you’re part of a cast like this, you’re fortunate enough to have people who are constantly informing what you’re doing.

It’s very touching for me to see Callum’s face when I get hurt [in the movie]. The empathy and kindness he was exuding in that moment aided me so much. I love that guy, weirdly. We’ve never had an experience like that in real life, you know what I mean? He’s a great guy, and we’re friends. But there was something about that…you share really intimate things with people [on movies] that you just wouldn’t, even if you’ve been friends with them for years. You don’t share the things you’re forced to share [on a movie set].

The big thing I was scared of was that [the cast] would get together as a band and dislike each other.

Jeremy: That wouldn’t have happened. That’s how I cast movies.

Anton: Well, I was still scared, but those guys are good dudes. They’re good people.

Jeremy: The environment we create is, every actor on set wants to be there. They were invested. When you have that chemistry, that mutual support…it becomes real. Everyone feeds off of each other. When you’re in the room, you’re at the mercy of every single performance. You cannot have one that’s off. That real-life energy, that charge, was palpable in every take.

What’s the message of the picture?
Jeremy: There are lots of layers there. There’s subtle political commentary in there. There’s a thesis to the movie, and that’s more about stripping down ideology and affiliation and who we think we are in labels. It’s about a learned aggression and violence…all sorts of shit. But really, it’s entertainment. It’s about good, old-fashioned escapist filmmaking. Drawing from my favorite experiences with Blue Ruin, which were derived from watching audiences respond to intention…that was so fucking exhilarating for me.

With Green Room, what I wanted to do was infuse an archive, my experience in the punk rock and hardcore scene. I wanted to have something to show for it. I wanted to make a genre film but infuse it with the energy of the hardcore punk scene, which I really loved and also defined my youth.

What are some new things the movie brings to the table as far as genre filmmaking?
Jeremy: I really try to not let specific genres influence me. I’m certainly collectively influenced by all of the films I’ve ever seen. I did watch Straw Dogs for a reference. I knew this plot wasn’t going to be very thick. Straw Dogs was about the experience and tension and tone. A very thin plot. This is the point of Green Room. We’re not going for a convoluted plot. Contrived plot twists, injected character conflict or love stories that just don’t belong…it’s this insane, visceral experience. It’s an overnight clusterfuck, and it’s terrifying. It’s designed to be the most tense film I could ever imagine.

I approached it as a war film. That’s what it was. It’s a siege scenario. It has aesthetic elements that could be attributed to the horror genre. Certainly a lot of graphic violence. The way I approached it with the production design and the actors was that it was a very grounded war film, but on the other side of the door, there are amateurs.

We’ve been talking a lot about actors.
Anton: What’s wrong with that? [laughs]

[laughs] Jeremy, is there a technique you have when working with your actors?
Jeremy: [To Anton] What is my technique? No, seriously. Do I have a technique? I don’t perceive myself as having a technique.

Anton: I think, when you watch Jeremy’s movies, there’s a real sensitivity to performance. There are two parts of me. There’s the really critical, film-nerd part of me that loves that, and then there’s the part of me where I’m like, “I really didn’t like that movie, but I want to work with that director because he loves actors.” I think you can see that in Jeremy’s films. I love Macon [Blair]. He’s such a good actor, you know? What a beautiful performance in Blue Ruin. I was geeking out on meeting him. But you see in Blue Ruin that there’s a real sensitivity to people’s performances, and that’s what it’s like on set.

I know that Jeremy was going through a lot of stuff that we had no idea about, actually. And I’d say, in a microcosm, that is your approach. We had no idea what Jeremy was dealing with outside of just trying to man this ship on the day, and it was really about being sensitive to what we were doing and trying to get the right moments. It’s a real love for performance that, as an actor, you appreciate. It’s giving you a chance to make stuff, and I think that is a way of working with actors. That is an approach. I’m sure there are directors who don’t like to work with actors and don’t know how to be sensitive to actors. The groundedness in these films comes from his sensitivity.

In his latest movie, Knight of Cups, Terrence Malick asks us to join him, for the third time in a row, on a journey through the meandering thoughts of people lost in life, confessing their innermost moral quandaries to the cosmos as they stumble and crawl across god’s green earth and bask in heavenly sunlight. This time, the setting is Los Angeles, photographed in all its concrete, Art-Deco grandeur by trusted Malick collaborator (and Oscar darling) Emmanuel Lubezki. We follow and listen in on the thoughts of fading movie star Rick (Christian Bale) and, occasionally, his famous friends, as Malick lays out another unbearably thin narrative that’s as deviously frustrating as a 500-piece puzzle with 450 pieces missing. The eminently respected auteur clearly has a firm grip on the art of filmmaking—at his best, he’s one of the greats—but with his work becoming increasingly nebulous and less inviting to audiences, it’s come to the point where patience for his vagaries grows dangerously thin.

In an almost wordless onscreen performance (we hear his voice, but mostly in the form of narration), Bale drifts down the streets of L.A., occasionally jumping in thought to memories from Las Vegas, Century City and Santa Monica. Rick is in a perpetual state of punch-drunk spiritual crisis, surrounded by gorgeous women who glom onto his status, wealth and handsome looks until his emotional ineptness becomes too much to bear, at which point they make way for the next batch of girls to grab at his pants.

Rick’s fleeting romantic partners are played by a dizzying crowd of famous faces: Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Imogen Poots, Teresa Palmer, Freida Pinto, Isabel Lucas and more can now add a Malick film to their resume. The roles are thin—Blanchett plays his ex-wife, Portman plays a fling—but isn’t every role thin in a Malick movie these days? Antonio Banderas makes an appearance a Hollywood playboy who throws a swanky house party littered with real-life celebrities playing themselves (“Look! It’s Joe Manganiello! Nick Kroll! Danny Strong! Wait…Danny Strong? Huh?”). Banderas takes over narration duties for a bit, spouting twisted, misogynist philosophy. “Women are like flavors,” he says in his sumptuous Spanish accent. “Sometimes you want raspberry, but then you get tired of it and you want strawberry.”

Malick does a good job of laying out the monstrous, indulgent allure of showbiz that pulled Rick in and broke him down into the wandering, pulp of a man he is. He’s become a phony, just like all the other soul-sapped leeches overpopulating the trashy town that bred them (to be clear, Angelenos, I mean Tinseltown, or the idea of it, not L.A.). Similarly swallowed by the city is Rick’s brother (Wes Bently), a non-famous drifter whose short temper is inherited from his and Rick’s late father. The particulars of the family drama (and, in fact, most of the particulars of Ricks life) are left for us to imagine on our own, but the quality of Bale and Bentley’s performances helps to form some semblance of an emotional arc.

Some (this writer included) would consider it a duty of a true movie lover to meet the filmmaker halfway when a film’s concepts or ideas are challenging or obscure. But with Malick’s recent work, it feels like he’s not meeting us halfway. We can only give so much of ourselves over to him before his movies start to feel like tedious chores. What’s so tragic about this is that, on a cinematic level, he’s phenomenal: he and Lubezki’s imagery is sweeping, evocative and immaculately conceived. Some moments—like a ground-level shot of Bale taking a knee on the concrete as an earthquake shakes the buildings and people around him—are so exquisite you could cry. But without a deeper sense of cohesion, these cinematic feats start to feel hollow as they pile on top of each other for two hours straight. As with Malick’s last movie, To The Wonder, Knight of Cups topples over, leaving us to sift through a mess of pretty pictures in a desperate search of some morsel of meaning. Like his characters, maybe it’s time for us to wake the hell up.

One of the most buzzed about films during the festival circuit last year was Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room (we saw it first at Cannes, then TIFF, and now Sundance, its last major festival before a limited release in April). Following up his successful indie thriller Blue Ruin, Saulnier doubles down on just about every aspect: more thrills, more kills, more discomfort, and perhaps most impressive, more narrative. Green Room is a fierce, white-knuckle blood fest that doesn’t stop for air once it gets going.

A struggling punk band appropriately named The Ain’t Rights tour around to any local scene willing to listen, but they haven’t had much luck. Just as they’re about to throw in the towel and head back home, they catch wind of a promising gig, but it comes with a small caveat—the isolated venue is home to a bunch of skinheads. While backstage, the band accidentally witnesses a murder, and from there things spiral out of control. The owner of the venue (a methodical Patrick Stewart) contains the band members in a room while he devises a plan to eliminate them as witnesses, but the band doesn’t give up easy. They come up with their own strategy to make it out alive, and that’s when Green Room transitions from being a thriller to a horror film. The film unfolds like a bloody chess match between both sides, each using any available trick and traps to their advantage.

Green Room is a vivid nightmare that’s impossible to get out of your head. More than just a gruesome blood bath, the film is surprisingly witty and expertly crafted. Saulnier keeps you in suspense until the very end.

Rating:
8/10

With Green Room, Jeremy Saulnier has perfected the intensity he showed in brief glimpses with his previous film Blue Ruin. Whereas Ruin played out through a more slow-paced approach and focused on the vicious cycle of a long-lasting blood feud, Green Room goes full genre, putting characters in a situation that’s seemingly impossible to get out of while gleefully letting everything to go hell in a handbasket. It’s a thriller that knows exactly what it’s doing, raising the stakes to an unbearable level while subverting expectations associated with the genre. In terms of pure, raw intensity and entertainment, Green Room is fantastic, and confirms Saulnier as a filmmaker to be reckoned with.

As these sorts of stories go, things start off with a calm before the storm. Punk band The Ain’t Rights are touring with no money and apparently no gigs either; they can barely afford food and siphon gas in order to keep traveling to their next destination. After driving out of their way to perform for some guaranteed cash they learn that the show’s been cancelled, but they’re offered an alternate gig; performing at a neo-nazi bar in what looks like the middle of the woods. They accept, and despite a rocky performance, things go well. It isn’t until they’re about to leave that things go south, when band member Sam (Alia Shawkat) forgets her phone in the eponymous green room. When bandmate Pat (Anton Yelchin) goes back to grab it for her, he walks in to find the headline act standing over the dead body of a young girl. With Pat being witness to a crime, the neo-Nazi bar staff lock the band in the room while bar owner Darcy (Patrick Stewart) and his right-hand man Gabe (Macon Blair) figure out how to handle the situation.

Right away, Saulnier establishes that playing by his own rules. The band, who turn Pat into a de facto leader as they try to negotiate an escape with Darcy through the room’s locked door, aren’t stupid. They know what will happen to them, and the more time they spend waiting the more time their captors can strategize a way to take them out. This is where the film’s earlier section pays off, since Saulnier’s ability to write realistic characters makes it easy to relate to the band’s desperate, yet smart, attempts to get out alive. Saulnier realizes the importance of realism, and that making viewers relate to the characters only ups the anxiety to a nauseating degree.

And once the situation goes haywire, Saulnier doesn’t hesitate to get brutal (and boy, does it get brutal). Machetes, box cutters, rabid dogs, and plenty more get used in the various showdowns, and when people die they go out screaming. Saulnier’s decision to cast character actors like Yelchin and Shawkat in the band puts his protagonists on a level playing field, making it impossible to guess who might make it out alive by the end. One by one, Saulnier removes the safe havens of conventions from viewers, meaning every moment plays out with an unpredictability that the film thrives on.

That’s largely because Saulnier doubles down on the best aspect of Blue Ruin; the ability to let his characters make mistakes. While Pat and his bandmates try their best to outsmart their rivals, Saulnier constantly reminds viewers that these are people desperately trying to feel their way through a situation they have no earthly idea how to grasp. Clever attempts to trick Darcy’s foot soldiers play out in ways they couldn’t expect, and even if they do pay off it might come at the cost of someone’s life. Much like The Raid: Redemption, Green Room is a survival thriller that understands the importance of constantly establishing the stakes, raising them higher, and letting people enjoy watching characters try to get out of the increasingly small corner they’ve put themselves in. It’s like watching a spectacularly bloody fireworks show, but with the knowledge that one of those explosives could come flying in your direction at any time.

Director Jeremy Saulnier‘s second feature Blue Ruin, a stripped down revenge thriller, took the indie world by storm last year on its way to a nomination for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2015 Indie Spirit Awards. Wasting little time in assembling a follow-up, Saulnier is now in Cannes to debut his next color-related movie Green Room. Featuring a larger and more well-known cast than his previous film, including Patrick Stewart, Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots, Green Room held its Cannes Film Festival premiere over the weekend to a largely positive reception.

Green Room follows a group of punk rockers called The Ain’t Rights, who take an ill-advised gig in the backwoods of Oregon, only to stumble onto violent crime and in the middle of a confrontation with the local, violent, white-supremacist gang. Patrick Stewart plays the leader of the gang. Green Room also stars Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Mark Webber, as well as Blue Ruin star Macon Blair.

Watch the first clip of Green Room below, in which an intimidating Eric Edelstein explains the difference between a bullet and a cartridge:

Shortly after the announcement that Knight of Cups would have its World Premiere in competition at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival, the latest project written and directed by Terrence Malick has followed up with a first-look trailer. Full of strangely framed shots from renowned cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who last worked with Malick on The Tree of Life, make sure to watch our video essay on the Screen Poetry of Terrence Malick), several of them upside down, the Knights of Cup trailer gives brief glimpses at the infidelity and celebrity status that the film might ultimately be about.

Starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman, the well-known cast extends well beyond its three leads including names like Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, Wes Bentley, Isabel Lucas, Teresa Palmer, Imogen Poots, Armin Mueller-Stahl, the voice of Ben Kingsley and others who may or may not survive the final edit. Knight of Cups’ official synopsis is about as cryptic as the trailer:

Once there was a young prince whose father, the king of the East, sent him down into Egypt to find a pearl. But when the prince arrived, the people poured him a cup. Drinking it, he forgot he was the son of a king, forgot about the pearl and fell into a deep sleep.

Rick’s (Christian Bale) father used to read this story to him as a boy.

The road to the East stretches out before him. Will he set forth?

The Knight of Cups trailer is available online through FilmNation, watch it below:

John Ridley, the man who took on the heavy task of adapting Solomon Northup’s memoir Twelve Years a Slave into the Oscar-winning script that mesmerized us all this past year, has taken on true-life once again with Jimi: All Is by My Side. Focusing on the early years of Jimi Hendrix’s career, the film starts with Jimi, starring André Benjamin (André 3000 of Outkast fame), the night he meets the woman who will kick-start his path to fame, Linda Keith, played with doll-like charm by Imogen Poots. Her faith in his abilities and his destiny as a star pushes the film forward. After a series of misses, she finally makes a match for Jimi in Chas Chandler (Andrew Buckley), former bassist for The Animals, who sees that same star power in him and insists he come to London and sign with him as manager. On his first night in London Jimi meets Kathy Etchingham (Heyley Atwell) after playing at The Scotch and the two immediately begin what would be a several year relationship. The film documents the steps in Jimi’s career leading up to the Monterey Pop Festival where Jimi the Myth became Jimi the Legend.

The film’s weaknesses have nothing to do with its cast, instead Ridley attempts to channel the times with some of his more artistic choices in editing. Dialogue is often cut off mid-sentence, the more famous characters are given silly freeze frames with their names written on-screen, wigs run rampant, and while it’s understood drug use was a huge part of the scene, the hazy way in which Ridley tries to convey the mood is sometimes just too distracting from what we really want to see and hear: Jimi playing music. But when André Benjamin is given free rein to be Jimi, and in the scenes where he plays guitar especially, boy does he impress. His spot-on imitation of Jimi’s slow and deliberate speech patterns, juxtaposed with the intense presence he had on stage, are a testament to just how well the actor did his research. Jimi Hendrix enthusiasts will have very little to complain about.

It may be the tiniest bit too self-aware and Ridley might have been fan-boying out a little in his attempt, but the performances shine through his stranger directorial decisions and the film effectively pays tribute to the groundbreaking titan Jimi Hendrix was while respecting the more intricate parts of his personal life. A well done biopic carried by an inspired cast that’s failings are entirely artistic but in no way disrespect the legend it depicts.

Originially published on June 13, 2014 during the Los Angeles Film Festival

Many film fans are familiar with the work of the late novelist Patricia Highsmith, whether they know it or not, as her books have been adapted into several films including the Alfred Hitchcock classic Strangers on a Train, and the not as classic Matt Damon-lead The Talented Mr. Ripley. The most recent Highsmith film adaptation, Hossein Amini’s The Two Faces of January, has been making the festival rounds and will be showing at the LA Film Festival in June.

Now, another one of the well-loved author’s novels is set for adaptation with a cast led by Patrick Wilson, Jessica Biel, Imogen Poots, and Toby Jones. The as-of-yet untitled adaptation of Highsmith’s novel The Blunderer will be directed by Andy Goddard. Killer Films’ Christine Vachon & David Hinojosa are attached to produce, and Sierra Pictures is set to finance the psychological thriller, which will search for buyers in Cannes.

Production company Killer Films has a history of facilitating filmmakers in preparing their first or second features. Just since 2013 the production company has worked with John Krokidas (Kill Your Darlings), Lance Edmands (Bluebird), Andrew T. Betzer (Young Bodies Heal Quickly), Tristan Patterson (Electric Slide), and Jason Stone (the upcoming film The Calling) in getting their first films made. While director Andy Goddard is far from inexperienced (having directed a lot of television including several Downton Abbey episodes) this will only be his second feature film, and his first American-made movie.

Production is slated to start on this film later this year.

Source: Deadline

Watching Filth, I noticed a few things. One, I felt increasingly as the film progressed that a good long shower was in my immediate future, and two, that those cunning crystal blue eyes of James McAvoy serve the same purpose in all his films. To absolutely mesmerize. While it’s more often to steal the hearts of females everywhere, in Filth, those eyes hypnotize all, hiding the evil of a man intent on getting what he wants.

From the same crusty mind who brought the world the novel Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh, comes Filth, adapted for the screen and directed by Jon Baird. McAvoy plays Bruce Robertson, a detective with his eye on a promotion to Detective Inspector. When a juicy murder comes up, he’s assigned the lead on the case. In order to assure his lead on the promotion, Robertson starts to attack his competition with coy tricks to drive them mad, expose their secrets and generally make himself look better. The depths of his malice know no bounds and Bruce is driven by the belief that this promotion will bring his broken family back together, since his wife left with their daughter. Even his one and only friendship, with Bladesey (Eddie Marsan) a meek man from Bruce’s masonic lodge, is one of undeserved manipulation and bullying.

Bi-polar and maintaining a pretty heavy drug addiction throughout, Bruce’s focus on messing with the lives of his co-workers begins to deter from his investigation and as things begin to unravel for him the story leads to a twist ending where he is faced with an even more unsettling truth about himself.

Currently available to stream VOD, I highly recommend using subtitles when watching Filth. The Scottish accents are pretty stinkin’ heavy, not to mention their expressions aren’t ones Americans are likely to be familiar with. McAvoy does an excellent job with the role–a truly hideous but engaging persona to watch. His complete lack of a moral compass makes him interesting, but ultimately the shift in plot at the tail end of the film attempt to give him a humanity that just doesn’t seem deserved. A sub-plot involving a woman (Downton Abbey‘s Joanne Froggatt) whose husband’s life Bruce is unable to save–in the one time in the film he acts like a cop–is too intermittent to make us care for him. And the film’s ending, while somewhat unexpected, leaves no real satisfaction.

But that seems to be Welsh’s intent (if indeed the film follows the novel). Baird’s film deserves some distinction for its gritty cartoonish (and indeed there are actual cartoons in the film) visuals, and watching McAvoy wreak havoc is certainly entertaining, but it’s not likely to make the same splash Trainspotting made. The dark humor is too dark at points, while abandoned altogether at others, and the revelations aren’t enough to explain things satisfactorily.

McAvoy pulls his weight, but it’s not enough to push this filth to the top of the trash heap.

British filmmaker Simon Aboud makes his full length debut as a director and writer of the indie film Comes a Bright Day. The film is a bizarre blend of genres when a romantic love story unfolds during a life threatening hostage situation. There was even some comedy sprinkle in. But the hodgepodge of themes felt exactly like that, a jumbled mixture of dissimilar themes that did not mix well.

Sam Smith (Craig Roberts) is hotel bellboy or as he describes it, a bag carrier and general bitch for the rich. One day his manager sends him on an errand that takes him to a jewelry store. Before he does that he makes a quick stop at a local café where he meets a girl named Mary Bright (Imogen Poots) who catches his eye. The two exchange a few words before leaving. It just so happens that the two would meet again in just a few short moments.

Upon entering the jewelry store he has already made up his mind that he would like to date her. Fate is on his side as she works at the jewelry store that he was sent to go to. But fate also had something else in store for him when two guys with guns show up to rob the place. Suddenly they become involved in a hostage situation.

The gunmen assumed that the robbery would be a quick smash and grab and did not take in account to be trapped inside the store surrounded by police. Now confined to the store they must come up with another plan. In the meantime, Sam and Mary continue to get to know one another despite the inopportune setting. Sam soon finds out that Mary is planning on leaving the country in less than a month, which assumes they make it out of this situation alive.

Although Craig Roberts plays a similar role to his character in Submarine, the performance did not match. His deadpan delivery and play-it-cool attitude did not work as well here. He never acted like his life was in danger unlike the rest of the cast who were way more believable (especially Imogen Poots). He just did not seem to fit properly in this film.

Where Comes a Bright Day shines the most is the camera work. The majority of the film was restricted to a single room which can be difficult to pull off. Aside from the limited setting, the film was impressive with presenting well composed shots. Production quality as a whole was the only area that the film was proficient in.

You have to appreciate Aboud’s bold attempt of making his first feature film that combines such different genres but it did not work as feature film. I think it would have been better suited to be condensed down into a short film. Comes a Bright Day had too many issues to be a film that can be recommend to watch. The one thing that the film did accomplish is that it showed Aboud does have potential as a director but Comes a Bright Day was perhaps just a bit too ambitious for the rookie filmmaker.