The Green Inferno Review
Posted by Stephen Lambrechts - 21/9/2015
Those hoping that The Green Inferno would inspire a cannibal movie resurgence should put that notion to rest, as Eli Roth's latest is more likely to act as the final nail in the sub genre's coffin. Aiming to emulate the Italian cannibal movies of the early '80s, such as Ruggero Deodato's infamous Cannibal Holocaust and Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox, The Green Inferno instead plays like a generic modern slasher, making it Roth's fourth straight movie about idiot college kids getting themselves into horrific situations by not having any common sense. At age 42, you'd think Roth would be ready to move beyond this trope and take advantage of a sub genre that almost exclusively deals with adult professional characters. I suppose we'll have to wait for his next film Knock Knock, starring Keanu Reeves, to see Roth take on more mature characters for a change (though early buzz on that film would indicate otherwise).
In an effort to impress student activist leader (and complete fucking idiot) Alejandro (Ariel Levy), our lead character Justine (Lorenza Izzo) joins Alejandro's crew of do-gooders on an extremely dangerous trip to the jungles of Peru to protect a section of rainforest that she doesn't really give a shit about. She does this despite the huge protestations of her roommate Kaycee (pop-singer Sky Ferreira, giving a seemingly stoned, cue card-reading performance) and her father (Hostel 2-alum Richard Burgi).
While the naivety of student activists getting involved in causes they know nothing about is an interesting theme to play with, Roth takes such an extreme approach to making Alejandro an unrelentingly shady asshole that it undermines the entire thing. He couldn’t be more obviously a villain if he were shown sitting in an underground lair stroking a white cat.
After a genuinely horrific plane crash leaves the activists stranded in the jungle, the crew is soon attacked by a tribe of vicious cannibals and captured. This leads to what is by far the film’s best scene, in which the surviving activists are led into the tribe’s village as hundreds of red-painted tribes people surround them, screaming. It’s an especially unnerving scenario that works entirely, making you understand just how terrifying the situation would be.
This also leads into the film’s one and only cannibal kill of note. A man has his eyeball scooped out and eaten, his tongue torn out and is then chopped to pieces, all while still alive. His fellow crew members look on horrified as his limbs are passed around for supper. It’s undeniably the high point of the film, unfortunately going downhill from there.
The rest of the crew’s death scenes are either tame, CGI-assisted (one person is swarmed by CGI ants, curiously aping one of the very worst scenes in Hostel 3) or happen entirely off-screen. A scene featuring female genital mutilation is supposed to be a show stopper, but is handled so delicately that it might as well have not happened (not that you particularly want to see it, but isn’t that kind of the point of the cannibal sub-genre?). This is the overall feeling of the entire film – Roth wants to pay tribute to the fucked up films that inspired him to become the biggest name in horror today, but he’s unwilling to cross over into full exploitation territory.
What’s the point of making a cannibal film that doesn’t embrace the sub-genre’s more depraved elements? Ever heard of a cannibal film that doesn’t feature any nudity? You have now! In The Green Inferno, even the tribes people are clothed in loincloth bikinis. Wait, I lie, the ginger Spy Kid shows his junk while taking a leak for some reason. Way to push the envelope, Eli! Hell, even the guy who that gets chopped to pieces is clothed head-to-toe in overalls. His limbs are distributed while still wrapped in clothing. It’s the equivalent of dressing a pig in a tuxedo before putting him on the spit. It's strange to see Roth make such a concession, as he once openly criticised the film Wrong Turn as unrealistic for not having its villains rape Eliza Dushku's character.
Roth also pays homage to the infamous ‘spike’ scene from Cannibal Holocaust, only in his version, the people propped on the spikes are once again fully-clothed and the spikes aren’t shown to exit their bodies. How are horror fans supposed to be impressed by a watered-down version of something they've already seen decades ago?
Roth re-teams with his Chilean co-writers Nicolàs López and Guillermo Amoedo from the awful film Aftershock, and once again, the collaboration fails to bear fruit. With some truly terrible dialogue exchanges, illogical character actions, lame attempts at stoner humour, clumsy social commentary (which the film's marketing campaign would suggest is mocking Social Justice Warriors) and a baffling ending that goes nowhere, you really start to get a sense of how instrumental Quentin Tarantino's guiding hand was on the first two Hostel films.
The Green Inferno will surely play better to those who are unfamiliar with Italian cannibal films (at least until the ending, which will have them asking what the hell they just watched), though hardcore horror fans who've seen how far the sub-genre can go will likely be disappointed. Compared to the cannibal films that inspired it, The Green Inferno is like the R-rated cut of a porn film – you can see where it’s going, but all the good bits are missing.
★★
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