The Horror Show
The Green Inferno
by Eli Roth
For almost two years I, along with countless others, have been patiently awaiting the release of Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno. Not only am I a fan of Eli Roth, but I am a huge fan of Cannibal Holocaust, which Roth’s latest film is giving a nod to. I went in with high hopes for this one, and I did not come out disappointed, just indifferent. If you’re familiar with any of Roth’s films then you’re aware of the endless gore and body horror fused with dark humor; this recipe is what makes his films so appealing to me.
The Green Inferno on the other hand was terribly boring for the first thirty minutes or so of the film as we follow Justine (Lorenza Izzo) around her college campus and the supporting cast is built up. I could have done without any scenes containing her roommate Kaycee as her acting was about as good as a pair of shoes. The viewer is made to love Jonah (Aaron Burns) immediately as he is the big teddy bear with a crush on Justine and she is blind to his feelings. Justine instead takes an interest in Alejandro (Ariel Levy) the leader of a student activist group who plans on traveling to Peru with a group of activist friends in order to protest bulldozing in the Amazon Rainforest.
The film trots along at a snail’s pace as there is a lot of boring dialogue and interaction between the students and Justine and her father, who happens to work for the United Nations. Even when they finally arrive in Peru things don’t pick up until they actually get to the scene of the bulldozing and start chaining themselves to the equipment. Mild spoiler ahead: When Justine’s lock doesn’t work, she’s pulled from the equipment and now has a gun to her head. The rest of the group is filming with their phones and Alejandro informs the militia that they can’t kill Justine because her father works for the United Nations and they’d be executing his daughter on livestream. The students are then simply arrested and put on a plane, ordered to leave the country. Alejandro doesn’t feel bad about using Justine and putting her life at risk since they have accomplished so much by exposing the truth and stopping the bulldozers.
The plane then crashes and this is where the real fun begins as the crash sequence in itself is bloody and terrific. The students panic, wondering how they’ll ever be found in the middle of the rainforest but that worry is soon replaced by an even greater threat: a tribe kidnaps the surviving students and takes them back to their village.
It was at this point that the movie finally started to pick up. Trust me, I understand character building and story padding, and the story is just as important in this movie as any gore or horror displayed on screen. But where I feel the trailers and hype surrounding this movie misled people was that The Green Inferno was supposed to be a cannibal movie, and it wasn’t. There were only two true instances in the whole film that even showed cannibalism. That first scene is what made this movie in my opinion and I won’t give it away, but it was one of those things that made me squirm and actually want to scream at the screen “just die already!” The only other thing I’ll say about it is that Aaron Burns did a fantastic job and he was one of my favorite parts of the movie.
There are other plot points in the movie where cannibalism is eluded to, clearly, but aside from the first time the viewer is exposed to it, the rest of the film falls flat. I’m not saying that there weren’t other gory, horror-filled moments, but the film climaxed far too soon and we were treated to mere bunny slopes for the remaining forty minutes or so.
I will say that what saved this movie for me was Roth’s signature dark humor thrown in. Quite a few times I found myself laughing out loud at the most inappropriate times when these poor student activists are enduring a living nightmare, and I can only assume that those laughter-inducing moments were there for a reason.
The worst part of this movie for me though was the CGI. There are two things in particular that just made me cringe, and not the good kind of cringe when something gross or horrific is happening. All I’ll say is ants and a large jungle cat. Definitely worth noting that as I type up this review I’m shaking my head just thinking about the bad CGI.
The ending of The Green Inferno was great, I applaud the surviving member of the student activist group for her actions at the end of the film and that’s because she proves to truly be an activist with those actions. She’s the only one who was able to make a difference, and she did. A mid-credits scene reveals a phone conversation and a satellite image from the village in the rainforest, setting up a possible sequel. After researching on the internet a bit I found that a sequel was indeed announced but later put on hold. Does this film need a sequel? Definitely not, but I’d totally watch it.
Was this movie Eli Roth’s best? Nope, not by a longshot, but I did enjoy myself. I probably won’t be watching it again anytime soon but if it happened to come on one of the premium channels or show up on a streaming service one day, I’d take a seat on the couch and give it a second go.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
The Horror Show Menu.