El infierno verde

Think about the first time you rode some big, new roller coaster. As you waited in line and contemplated what lay ahead, your heart started beating faster. When you occupied your seat, and the picture in front of you began to move, you found yourself wondering what you had gotten yourself into. As you arrived at that first really scary moment, you resisted the urge to close your eyes, even as others around you were enjoying the thrill by thrusting their arms into the air. From that point, everything was a blur of shouts and screams, ups and downs, punctuated by brief moments of relative stillness. Then, suddenly, the ride ended. You were surprised how quickly it went by and, even though you felt a little queasy, you were glad you had the experience. You even may have commented that it wasn't as bad as you thought it was going to be, and that you kind of enjoyed it, all as you started to look forward to that next uncomfortable challenge. You just rode a scary new coaster, but might as well have been experiencing the uncomfortable thrill of a new Eli Roth movie… one like "The Green Inferno" (R, 1:40), for example.

Personal feelings about graphically violent movies like the "Saw" franchise or Roth's own "Hostel" films aside, Roth's film "The Green Inferno" has a colorful history. The film traces its roots to cannibal-themed movies made in Italy during the 1970s and 80s. Roth's 2015 resurrection of this controversial horror sub-genre draws most directly from 1980's "Cannibal Holocaust", a movie so realistic that director Ruggero Deodato was arrested and put on trial for the murder of some of the actors in the film. (Deodato was only exonerated after he gathered all of his actors together for a TV show appearance and then demonstrated in court the special effects used to create the actors' "deaths".) That movie's working title was "The Green Inferno", a title which was eventually applied to the most gruesome scenes in "Cannibal Holocaust", specifically, the film within the film that purports to show footage from a missing documentary film crew. (This was the first use of the "found footage" or "pseudo-documentary" device, which was popularized in the U.S. by 1999's "The Blair Witch Project".) The title "The Green Inferno" was later also used as an alternate title for the 1988 sequel "Cannibal Holocaust II". Eli Roth filmed "The Green Inferno" in the jungles of Peru in 2012. His film opened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. It was scheduled to be released in the U.S. in September 2014, but financial problems at the film's production company led to the film being pulled. Blumhouse Productions stepped in and the company's multi-platform releasing arm, BH Tilt, released "The Green Inferno" on September 25, 2015.

After a brief scene of bulldozers flattening a rain forest in the Amazon, the narrative of Roth's cannibal film starts innocuously on the streets of New York City. College freshman Justine (Lorenza Izzo) and her roommate, Kaycee (singer-songwriter Sky Ferreira), are annoyed by the student activists protesting outside their window, but Justine is also intrigued. She attends one of the group's meetings in which their charismatic student leader, Alejandro (Ariel Levy), discusses their plan to save a village in Peru from being overrun by bulldozers paving the way for a natural gas mining operation. The students plan to dress as workers, chain themselves to trees and bulldozers, then live stream video from their cell phones to get the world's attention – and keep themselves from being shot by the armed mercenaries which protect the operation. Justine's dad (Richard Burgi), a lawyer at the U.N., expresses his reservations, but Justine goes on what she naively believes will be a weekend trip to save a native tribe from extinction.

After landing in Peru, everything goes according to plan until their small plane crashes in the Amazonian jungle. Several of the students die in the crash, but the survivors are captured by the very tribe that the group was there to save. Not speaking any English or having had any positive experience with outsiders, the tribe considers their captives their enemy – and their dinner. One of the students is ritualistically killed by the village's elder / high priestess (Antonieta Pari) and then he is promptly dismembered, cooked and eaten. His friends watch in horror from behind the wooden bars where they are confined. What follows are more killings, more feasting and various attempts by the students to escape before the natives finish them off, whether for food, as punishment, or because of their brutal religious practices.

"The Green Inferno" is a wonderful family movie. (Still reading? Just checking.) Actually, the film is more restrained than I expected. There's much less nudity than in previous Eli Roth movies and the gore, as disturbing as it is, could have been a lot more graphic, given what's happening on screen. Most of what's shown is on par with typical slasher flicks. You might even say that this is a relatively… tasteful cannibal movie. The story's solid, the acting's fairly decent for this genre and the film works as a horror movie, a thriller, a political commentary and there's even some dark comedy. Some call this kind of movie "torture porn". I think that's a stretch, but the more graphic scenes make it difficult to simply call this movie "entertaining" without qualifying the term. I judge movies based on how entertaining they are and how well they each accomplish their individual goals. Based on those measures, I'd have to say that, much like that big, new roller coaster, this movie isn't for everyone, but many will find it bloody good. "B+"

In New York, the college student Justine (Lorenza Izzo) joins a group of activists led by Alejandro (Ariel Levy) and he invites her to travel to Peru to protest against a timber industry that is destroying the Amazon rain forest. The group uses their cellphones to film the destruction and send the footages through Internet. Alejandro uses Justine that is almost killed by one security guard to succeed in his intent of calling attention of audiences. When the group is returning to civilization, the plane blows-up and crashes into the forest. Soon the survivors discover that they are not alone and they are abduct by a tribe of Indians. But their nightmare becomes worse when they realize that the Indians are cannibals.

"The Green Inferno" is an unoriginal and stupid film of cannibals by Eli Roth. The story is not well-written and Justine joining the group of activists is totally unconvincing. The conclusion is awful. There are at least two better movies about cannibals: "Cannibal Holocaust" is extremely realistic, disturbing, cruel and sick, and Eli Roth did not dare to depict such violence; and "Cannibal Ferox" that is also realistic and cruel. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Canibais" ("Cannibals")

The Green Inferno (2013)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A group of college students decide to head to South America where they're going to protest some developers who are damaging the rain forest and threatening a tribe that has lived there for thousands of years. Their plan doesn't quite work when their plane crashes in the jungle and soon the survivors have the unlucky fate of being served up for dinner.

Eli Roth's homage to the Italian cannibal movies of the 70s and early 80s is a rather mixed bag. After the movie was over I really didn't know what to think about it because there had been so much hype built around it. For the most part I don't think the film lived up to the hype but this is going to depend on your knowledge of the genre. If you have no idea what CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, EATEN ALIVE and CANNIBAL FEROX are then there's a great chance that you're going to be shocked and horrified at what you see here. If you're familiar with those films then you're going to see THE GREEN INFERNO as a watered down American film.

Again, it's really hard to judge this movie but I'm overly familiar with the Italian cannibal movies so let me get that out of the way. I think this film is going to shock, outrage and gross out the majority of the people who watch it as there's no question that this contains some of the most graphic and goriest violence that has ever been in an American film that had to go in front of the MPAA. How this got a R-rating is rather shocking in itself and it really makes you laugh when you watch something like this and think at one point something like SCREAM had to be cut to avoid a NC-17 rating. Again, the gore effects are rather great with many practical effects that are quite effective. The gore and violence, again, will shock most people.

With that said, if you're familiar with the brutal films in the genre then you're not going to blink an eye here. There's really nothing shocking, outrageous or too graphic if you're familiar with the films that I mentioned before. This movie certainly doesn't have the animal violence but it also doesn't have the graphic rape, mutilations or any of the infamous moments from those films. You'd think that this homage would wink at those movies and their graphic moments but the film doesn't even try. This just gives the movie an overall watered down feel that fans of the genre are going to notice and especially when you consider that there's not even any real nudity in the picture. If you can't show nudity then you know certain elements of violence aren't going to be shown.

I think another disappointing thing is that the jungle settings really aren't used. Those Italian movies worked so well because you could enjoy them as adventure stories but that's not the case here. I will say that the build-up was a lot more entertaining than I expected it to be because the violence doesn't happen until the last portion of the movie. The performances are certainly better than you'd expect with Lorenza Izzo making for a good and likable lead. The story itself is okay with some sly humor thrown in at times but then again there are some really stupid moments. There's one girl in the cage who gets "sick" and this scene is just downright stupid. There's an incredibly awful jump scare towards the end, which will have you rolling your eyes.

THE GREEN INFERNO is a decent movie but at the same time it doesn't quite live up to all the hype that people have created for it the past couple years.

...Of the 70's and early 80's. A group of college students travel to a remote Peruvian location to protest a natural gas company's encroachment on an isolated, primitive native village. The students initial efforts are a success, but when their plane out crashes into the jungle, the natives aren't exactly thankful for the Americans' good deeds, preferring to butcher them and eat them.

Roth skewers Western do-good-ism and liberal interference with foreign cultures, showing that even the best intentions can (literally) come back to bite them. The lead performance from Lorenza Izzo is good as the freshman student whose naivete is shattered in more ways than one. The rest of the cast just has to scream a lot. The violence is extreme, the blood copious, and the gore plentiful, but it becomes just a bunch of latex and Karo syrup after a while. I realized watching this that Roth seems to have specialized in the fear of the traveler in foreign lands, whether it's city folk in the deep country (Cabin Fever), Americans in Eastern Europe (the Hostel films), or South America (Aftershock and this movie). I would have given this a higher rating if it weren't for the nonsensical ending.

If you were hooked (pun, ha ha) on the SAW movies then this film will be a good after meal snack. Yes, it was way overboard meal preparation and surprisingly realistic body snacks (in most cheap slasher/slice/dice films the prosthetics look artificial). Filming and acting were better than expected and sold me. Part of the reason the acting was somewhat capturing was the reality of a tropical Peruvian forest and the gusto in which the novice tribal people took to their roles. End result is nobody (including the eco provocateurs, tribes peoples, deforesters) came away smelling like roses, in fact, I would not have been displeased if, in the end, they were all munched upon by the resident leopard, vanquisher of evil. A couple of picky points that lowered the rating. First, every tribal member (no matter the age) was totally painted in red clay like pigment - all the time; not realistic given the humid conditions and time they would have needed to apply said substance. Second, all the women (and young girls) wore tops to cover their breasts which as we all know about tropical tribes - that just doesn't happen. Third, why would the village attack the construction armed mercenaries in a clearing given their stealth in a forest. Fourth, a lot of gaps foremost was Samantha's escape then we hear nothing more. Supposedly we are suppose to pay attention to tattoos. Suggestion: Watch again, afterwards, with cast commentary as it's more interesting than the film.