Green Room Ending Explained

Green Room enacts a “what would you do” premise, demonstrating what happens when a punk band gets a gig at a skinhead venue, comes across a murder scene, and tries to flee.

Very much in the spirit of Panic Room, Green Room falls into the escape genre of horror. A thriller, its main characters spend most of the time locked in a tight space. The film is a battle of wills between The Ain’t Rights and neo-Nazi leader Darcy (Patrick Stewart). Despite the film’s premise being steeped in politics, the film itself is far more stripped down and primal. Above all, it focuses on the element of survival.

While the film begins with a reasonably large ensemble cast, especially considering its tight sets, it does not take long for characters to begin dropping. The film proves itself unafraid of killing people off, demonstrating the very real threat Darcy poses to the main characters. One by one, people die in failed escape attempts, so by the end the only remaining survivors that stand a chance are lead singer Pat (Anton Yelchin) and skinhead-turned-ally Amber (Imogen Poots).

What Happens In Green Room’s Ending

With the death of Sam (Alia Shawkat), the skinheads have what they need to enact their plan, including the The Ain’t Right’s van keys. Darcy declares that three of the four dead band members are enough to stage the crime scene he’s been planning. Off to work on that, he teases Gabe (Macon Blair) with the prospect of earning his red shoelaces and leaves him behind with two other skinheads to get dispose of the remaining survivors.

Pat and Amber commiserate in the now-destroyed green room, where Pat delivers a speech about surviving an outmatched paintball game that rouses them into action. They paint their faces and lay a trap, managing to kill their hunters and take Gabe as a hostage. Gabe double-crosses the skinheads to call the police while Pat and Amber ambush Darcy and his compatriots, managing to kill all three. As Pat and Amber wait for the police, Pat is finally able to decide on a desert island band, a callback to the radio interview that eventually led him down the road to here.

What Is Pat’s Desert Island Band?

Although the character never says the name of the band in the movie, many believe that the credit cut to “Sinister Purpose” hints that the answer is Creedence Clearwater Revival. In a Reddit AMA, director Jeremy Saulnier confirmed that CCR was one of two correct answers. The second, he explained, was a song he whispered in Yelchin’s ear on set that remained a secret between director and actor.

What Was Darcy’s Plan?

Darcy only ever let members of The Ain’t Right die at the mercy of trained attack dogs. The band is shown siphoning gas at the start of the film, foreshadowing what Darcy uses against them to develop his case. Darcy intended to frame the death of the band as a result of their trespassing. The members were staged siphoning gas, while the dogs were let loose to create the illusion of an accident.

What Do The Red Laces Represent?

Twice the movie talks about red laces: once when Darcy refers to the new protocol being “red lace only” and once when he offers physical shoelaces to Gabe. Through this, audiences can understand red laces as some marker of different levels of experience and trust in the skinhead world. Green Room is explicit in marking Darcy’s group neo-Nazis, including throwaway lines about “race workshops” on Wednesdays. Like many movies, Green Room borrows certain concepts from real life. Red laces are a real skinhead concept that refer to when someone has spilled blood for the skinhead movement. Those who wear them have to “earn” them by enacting violence that leads to bloodshed, hence the red color.

Why Do Amber and Pat Paint Their Faces?

Pat tells a story over the course of the film about a paintball incident in which he and friends were up against war veterans and losing badly until one of them went wild and stopped playing by the rules. This is a story lifted directly out of Saulnier’s life, in which he describes the success of this “goody Rambo raid”. It was in breaking the rules of cover and battle that the wild player was able to lead his team to victory, despite the odds. Amber and Pat take inspiration from this concept. The skinheads have the upper hand, but they choose to play by their own rules. The face paint they don through the use of a permanent marker in part serves to elicit that Rambo vibe the director speaks of, but also works to indicate they are a team. It marks them as partners in a war they will fight how they please.

Green Room Explores What Punk Really Is

Although the inclusion of punk is certainly an aesthetic choice that borrows from the director’s own life experiences, it also plays into the movie’s themes. The punk rock movement, in real life, gained a serious skinhead following. The Ain’t Rights demonstrate their stance on this by playing a cover of the Dead Kennedys as their set opener, which basically tells Nazis to eff off. The song includes lyrics:

“Punk ain’t no religious cult

Punk means thinking for yourself

You ain’t hardcore ’cause you spike your hair

When a jock still lives inside your head”

Although punk has a certain look, the song and the film posit that the look is only truly punk if it matches the interior. A hierarchical group of followers that all turn to Darcy when in doubt aren’t exactly “thinking for [themselves]”. It is telling that the idea of singing the cover to a group of skinheads was Pat’s, the only surviving band member at the end. The film further explores this concept in the band’s assessment of Tad (David Thompson), trying to decide if he is “legit” just because he wakes up at five to put “goop” in his hair. Pat is unable to decide on a desert island band early in the movie, but the revelation comes to him after he and Amber take down a skinhead organization, proving themselves the true survivors. The music and the actions go hand-in-hand.

The Real Meaning Of Green Room’s End

While the movie takes a clear anti-Nazi stance, it also comes down something much more primal: the urge to survive. The title itself is a clue. A green room is the place behind the performance, where performers go when not on-stage. It asks audiences to reflect on a what-if scenario. Green Room lets audiences live vicariously through a group of characters unfit for survival, with no experience in weaponry and escape, in a situation that forces them to either rise to the challenge or die trying.

About The Author

Shannon Lewis
(79 Articles Published)

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Shannon Lewis is a features and news writer on Screen Rant. She has experience in editorial working as the deputy editor for Specialty Food, an online and print magazine, curating its news section and social media. She has worked as a freelance writer since 2017, writing articles, features, and profiles in a wide range of topics, from business and tech to pop culture and media. Previously, she has also worked as a ghost writer for a fiction manuscript, and co-founded arts-and-literature magazine, Octarine.

Hailing from Queretaro, Mexico, she is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s English Literature with Creative Writing program. An avid reader and fan of writing, she leverages her love of literature to dissect movies in her favorite genres, including horror, rom-coms, and superhero movies. Her focus is on the cross-section between story, cultural background, and character development. When she isn’t busy reading everything ever published under the mantle of Image Comics, you might find her writing fiction, rock climbing, or putting together a horror anthology with friends.

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