The Green Inferno

Starring: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Daryl Sabara, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Magda Apanowicz, Sky Ferreira, Nicolas Martinez, Richard Burgi
Directed by: Eli Roth
Rating: R
Genre: Adventure, Horror
2015

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A group of student activists are stranded in the Amazon after their plane crashes. They are found by a tribe of cannibals.

Review:

Tim: Surprisingly, this is the first feature film I've ever seen that Eli Roth has directed. I knew going into it that it would be violent and bloody. I'm not a very squeamish person- I've seen a lot of horrific things on screen among the 2,960+ movies I've seen. Still, going into this, I was a little apprehensive. I'd heard things about this long-delayed movie and wondered how I would do with it. Like many things, the buzz is more than the truth. Yes, there are some graphic moments, but the movie doesn't quite live up to its reputation.

On the plus side, you really don't see a lot of cannibal movies. I appreciated the attempt to pay tribute to some older B-movie cannibal films, and to do it with today's visual effects. I can't remember the last non-Hannibal Lecter cannibal movie I've seen, so I was looking forward to that. The visuals are certainly impressive. I love that Roth used actual Peruvian villagers- that lends the film a hyper realistic vibe. It certainly felt very different than a movie populated by polished actors playing the roles of the cannibals. That was a great decision. The lush jungle, the colors, it all adds up to an impressive visual experience.

The story was fairly decent and I appreciate how much time Roth dedicates to developing the characters. We don't even meet the tribe of cannibals until something like 45 minutes into the film. That feels like a long time, but it lets us get to know the characters. The idea of naive students traveling to "save" the rainforest and ending up in the cannibals' clutches was just believable enough. I appreciated the desire to develop the characters before they meet their gruesome fates.

Unfortunately, the extra time with the characters doesn't help the fact that they were a bit paper thin. I never really cared about anyone on screen. Some of this is due to the weak script, some of it is due to the bad acting of much of the cast. We're never really given a compelling reason to care about anyone, so we never get emotionally invested. Plus, a lot of the characters make stupid horror movie decisions. Strip away the cannibal theme and you have a bunch of young people dying one-by-one. It's the same premise we've seen in dozens of other films.

The real meat (haha, get it?) of the story is obviously the scenes of cannibalism. This are not easy to watch. I would certainly not recommend this movie to anyone who struggles with these kinds of scene. They are enough to make you sick. The very first scene involves a character being eaten alive, torn limb from limb by the cannibals. It's an effective, disturbing sequence. It might not have been as nauseating as it could have been, but I was gritting my teeth through it. That's the most shocking scene in the film. Once you're past that, the rest is easier to sit through. I will give Roth credit, he does know how to make audiences squirm in their seats. There's nothing easy about watching a human being eat another human being. This movie isn't for the faint of heart.

The cast wasn't great. Lorenza Izzo was fine in the lead role. She seemed like a typical horror movie heroine- a slightly better actor than the rest of the cast, but certainly nothing inspiring. Her character was kind of stupid, so that didn't help matters. Ariel Levy was okay, but his characters was a bit too unrealistic. His character needed to be handled with more restraint, both in the writing and with his performance. I actually enjoyed Aaron Burns quite a bit. The rest of the cast was pretty dreadful.

While The Green Inferno succeeds in making you very uncomfortable, I couldn't help but feel the whole thing was a bit amateurish. It felt like so much attention was spent on the visuals of the cannibal scenes that story and effective character development fell to the wayside. The script is too full of cliches. While the movie makes you squirm, it needed so much more to be worthwhile. There's some really cool ideas in this film, but Roth's heavy hand never lets the movie realize its full potential. In the end, I just didn't enjoy this movie very much.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 5.5


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