The Green Inferno
Year: 2013
Director: Eli Roth
Starring: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy & Nicholas Martinez
Runtime: 100 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 12/03/21
Director: Eli Roth
Starring: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy & Nicholas Martinez
Runtime: 100 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 12/03/21
If you read my review of Cannibal Holocaust, you’ll know that I thought the film was basically overhyped garbage. The few fleeting glimpses of greatness it had were overshadowed by awful acting, camerawork, pointless animal cruelty, and an underwhelming sociological analysis which was designed to be the films true saving grace.
So, whilst The Green Inferno isn’t in anyway related to Cannibal Holocaust, it does prove that even just over three decades later (at the time of The Green Inferno’s 2013 release) the influence Cannibal Holocaust had on film was very much still felt but for entirely the wrong reasons. So, let’s take another gory and bloody trip into the Amazon for no other reason than I damn well wanted to.
Justine (Lorenza Izzo) is a college freshman who after being made aware of the existence of female genital mutilation joins a student activist group in the hope that she will be able to make a difference. The group, led by Alejandro (Ariel Levy), intends to travel to the Amazon and chain themselves to construction equipment being used to tear down an area of rainforest near the location of an indigenous tribe.
The plan is a success and the media attention gained from it is enough to have the construction crew removed, however it comes at the cost of Justine almost being shot because Alejandro and his girlfriend Kara (Ignacia Allamand) purposely gave her a faulty lock, allowing the militia protecting the equipment to pull her down and almost execute her.
As the activist group are flown away from the site the plane crashes, killing the pilot and many of the activists. Those that survive are quickly drugged and captured by the tribe they were trying to protect, and so begins a fight for survival as they discover the tribe are cannibals who have just captured their next meals.
So, whilst The Green Inferno isn’t in anyway related to Cannibal Holocaust, it does prove that even just over three decades later (at the time of The Green Inferno’s 2013 release) the influence Cannibal Holocaust had on film was very much still felt but for entirely the wrong reasons. So, let’s take another gory and bloody trip into the Amazon for no other reason than I damn well wanted to.
Justine (Lorenza Izzo) is a college freshman who after being made aware of the existence of female genital mutilation joins a student activist group in the hope that she will be able to make a difference. The group, led by Alejandro (Ariel Levy), intends to travel to the Amazon and chain themselves to construction equipment being used to tear down an area of rainforest near the location of an indigenous tribe.
The plan is a success and the media attention gained from it is enough to have the construction crew removed, however it comes at the cost of Justine almost being shot because Alejandro and his girlfriend Kara (Ignacia Allamand) purposely gave her a faulty lock, allowing the militia protecting the equipment to pull her down and almost execute her.
As the activist group are flown away from the site the plane crashes, killing the pilot and many of the activists. Those that survive are quickly drugged and captured by the tribe they were trying to protect, and so begins a fight for survival as they discover the tribe are cannibals who have just captured their next meals.
The Green Inferno carries with it a message about corporations destroying land for natural resources, and how uninformed activism can lead to more harm than good. It was the subject of some controversy upon release due to its potentially damaging depiction of ‘uncivilised’ cultures, however director Eli Roth has stated that he believes the corruption of corporations destroying the homes of the people depicted in the film is more damaging than depicting said people as savages. Take that as you will, but I think it speaks volumes about the kind of film The Green Inferno is. Its sole focus is to shock, disgust, and make you dislike basically everyone, but blame it on the big bad CEO who gave the go ahead for the destruction of rainforest. It lacks the nuance or sensitivity necessary to hammer home the message it intends without depicting tribes such as the one in the film with great harm and prejudice. In layman’s terms, it’s not smart, but it likes to think it is. I think Roth sees himself as some great prophet of truth and enlightenment following his statement when in reality he likely just saw James Cameron’s Avatar and decided to try and turn it into a horror film.
If you’re going to watch The Green Inferno, go in for the deaths and the gore because they’re actually surprisingly good; but it does blow its load way too quickly and crams all the best deaths within a five minute window around the midpoint of the film. During the plane crash we’re treated to a grizzly decapitation, an impalement, someone getting crushed, another getting a chunk of his brain hacked out by a propellor blade, and someone getting speared through the neck and head by the tribespeople. It’s a lot of blood in just a few minutes and feels very Final Destination in a lot of ways. This is then quickly followed up by a brutal execution wherein the character in question has their eyes and tongue cut out, before having all of their limbs cut off, their head sawn off, and then their body cooked and eaten. Whilst there are more deaths that follow, none of them quite match the bloody mayhem that is the midpoint of the film.
My personal favourite death is quite tame in comparison, but the way it builds up to it is fantastic. One of the activists is killed offscreen and we don’t know this until the activists accidentally eat her, the realisation of which is enough to make one of them immediately kill herself. It’s not particularly graphic in comparison to what we’ve already been subjected to, but to me it’s the most effective death in the film.
If you’re going to watch The Green Inferno, go in for the deaths and the gore because they’re actually surprisingly good; but it does blow its load way too quickly and crams all the best deaths within a five minute window around the midpoint of the film. During the plane crash we’re treated to a grizzly decapitation, an impalement, someone getting crushed, another getting a chunk of his brain hacked out by a propellor blade, and someone getting speared through the neck and head by the tribespeople. It’s a lot of blood in just a few minutes and feels very Final Destination in a lot of ways. This is then quickly followed up by a brutal execution wherein the character in question has their eyes and tongue cut out, before having all of their limbs cut off, their head sawn off, and then their body cooked and eaten. Whilst there are more deaths that follow, none of them quite match the bloody mayhem that is the midpoint of the film.
My personal favourite death is quite tame in comparison, but the way it builds up to it is fantastic. One of the activists is killed offscreen and we don’t know this until the activists accidentally eat her, the realisation of which is enough to make one of them immediately kill herself. It’s not particularly graphic in comparison to what we’ve already been subjected to, but to me it’s the most effective death in the film.
I didn’t like any of the characters, but then again, I don’t think you’re supposed to. I get the feeling you’re supposed to relate to Justine, but I didn’t. She’s kind of dumb and doesn’t have any reason to be a part of this activist group. She joins because she feels that female genital mutilation in Africa is wrong and wants to do something about it, but then she’s told she’s going to help save a tribe and basically shunned by almost everyone in the group because she’s new but decides to go anyway. Like was she just trying to make a point that she took it seriously? Or was the film originally going to be about genital mutilation but then Roth realised he wouldn’t have been able to get that passed any censors and wouldn’t have had the same mass marketability as cannibalism.
Alejandro is such a fraud from the off that I’m surprised he even managed to get this group of people to the rainforest in the first place. The fact that none of the others saw through his cheap act before the plane crashed is incredible and ultimately proves that most of them deserved to die anyway just through Darwinism; but his whole attitude whilst being imprisoned is arguably the film’s biggest fault. He’s so cartoonishly evil that many of the scenarios where I’m supposed to be angered or disgusted by him, I just laughed because I couldn’t believe that a human being would genuinely act like that. Maybe I have too much faith in humanity, but when he started masturbating at the sight of a dead body to ‘relieve his stress and keep calm’ I lost it.
The Green Inferno is not a film I would recommend. Sure, it’s got some good deaths in the middle ten minutes of the film but whether that’s enough to see you through the remaining eighty minutes depends on your tolerance for unlikable characters.
Where Cannibal Holocaust at least tried to make an intelligent social commentary (and even had fleeting moments of success in it), The Green Inferno uses that film as a template and tries to make it about greedy corporations and the ‘white saviour’ complex instead. It doesn’t work and instead just results in painting isolated tribes as dangerous savages who probably deserve to be killed by these big corporations the film is condemning. Eli Roth may be a big name in horror but The Green Inferno is certainly far from the quality of his finest works.
Alejandro is such a fraud from the off that I’m surprised he even managed to get this group of people to the rainforest in the first place. The fact that none of the others saw through his cheap act before the plane crashed is incredible and ultimately proves that most of them deserved to die anyway just through Darwinism; but his whole attitude whilst being imprisoned is arguably the film’s biggest fault. He’s so cartoonishly evil that many of the scenarios where I’m supposed to be angered or disgusted by him, I just laughed because I couldn’t believe that a human being would genuinely act like that. Maybe I have too much faith in humanity, but when he started masturbating at the sight of a dead body to ‘relieve his stress and keep calm’ I lost it.
The Green Inferno is not a film I would recommend. Sure, it’s got some good deaths in the middle ten minutes of the film but whether that’s enough to see you through the remaining eighty minutes depends on your tolerance for unlikable characters.
Where Cannibal Holocaust at least tried to make an intelligent social commentary (and even had fleeting moments of success in it), The Green Inferno uses that film as a template and tries to make it about greedy corporations and the ‘white saviour’ complex instead. It doesn’t work and instead just results in painting isolated tribes as dangerous savages who probably deserve to be killed by these big corporations the film is condemning. Eli Roth may be a big name in horror but The Green Inferno is certainly far from the quality of his finest works.