The Green Inferno

You know, when I went to the theater to see "The Green Inferno", I was expecting another torture porn film full of gore and guts, mainly because the trailers made it out to be that way and it is what I've been hearing from a lot of different people. However, as I sat in the theater and picked apart the film, dissecting it bit by bit, I really came away a little more surprised than anything at part of the maturity (though it was drowned in terrible toilet humor from time to time) that was found in Roth's latest horror film. 

Taking inspiration from the late seventies and early trend of exploitation cannibal horror films that birthed from the likes of Ruggero Deodato (Heard of "Cannibal Holocaust", anyone?), "The Green Inferno" follows a group of student activists as they head out to a Peruvian location to stop bulldozers from destroying an ancient tribe. However, after being mistaken for the enemy after their plane crashes, the activists soon are taken as prisoners, as well as cooked up for meals.

What I liked about the film, however, was its build up to the catastrophic events. Focusing on Justine (Lorenza Izzo), she joins a cause to repel big corporations from tearing down a forest where an ancient and indigenous tribe lives. And, well, everything goes right for the most part. She teams up with a group of activists led by Alejandro (Ariel Levy), get to Peru, they tie themselves around a bulldozer, the military shows up, the footage is showed to the world through satellites, and then they are escorted back to their plane to go home. 

I would like to point out, however, that Roth did try and make a point to show off this group of activists as modern day SJWs, some of which are considered the bane of the internet as are so many other groups. But, that kind of slides off as these type of activist groups have existed for more than a long time, going back to Hippies and earlier and yada yada yada. You get my point. If he wanted to suggest, even in the slightest, that this group were all SJWs, Roth should have written the characters out to be much more offended at even the slightest notion of misogyny, and should have had them talk about it out loud and posting on blogs, Not trying to save a native tribe; that's something that SJWs just do not focus on, at all. 

But, after all is said and done, and they hop on their plane to head back home, an engine blows and they crash land. Several deaths later, the same tribe that they were saving come from the bushes, kill another one of them, and tranquilize the rest. It is when Justine and friends wake up do we finally see the tribe in full form. And, well, the look of them just is not entirely scary in one form or the other.

Imagine a bunch of half naked men and women painted red running about with spears. It really doesn't strike fear in anyone's hearts, and more or less reminds me of football fans getting ready for a night of partying. However, the Bald Headhunter (Ramon Llao) and the Elder (Antonieta Pari) who paint themselves different shades and actually look menacing had a pretty terrifying presence throughout the film. The Bald Headhunter's always fierce gaze and barking orders to the underlings never went unheard, and he used his commands to carry out vicious and brutal assaults on some. The Elder, quiet as she was, used her eyes to psychologically scorch the survivors of the plane crash, only to later indulge on their flesh. 

Now, everything that I've talked about came with a pretty serious tone. Torture, the activism, the plane crash, all of it. Sure, there was a bit of comedy here and there, but it was never anything that really felt out of place. However, in the later half of the film, Roth fucked up by injecting toilet and stoner humor into the film. Examples include one of the girls getting hit by a sudden strike of diarrhea, Alejandro jerking off to relieve stress after they've been captured, and the stoner being eaten alive after the tribesman get high. All these events were uncalled for and drew back the film more than it progressed it. These moments made me question what I was watching more than the scenes of cannibalism did, and that, if anything, should make you understand how ridiculously out of place these idiotic events were.

However, once done watching the film, I found myself pleased with what I watched. It wasn't horribly bad, which would have sucked since I have been waiting for this film for such a long time, but nor was it terrifically good. It definitely had the potential to be a terrific horror film with social commentary, but that was flushed out through some bad attempts at darkened humor, and, well, not the greatest script in the world. But, for what it was, a cannibal exploitation film, "The Green Inferno" is a film that turns the stomach and is worth watching at least once for horror fans.