The Green Inferno Movie Review
Eli Roth (Hostel) returns to remind Americans they should never leave their own country. In this one, a group of college students head to Peru to stop a company from bulldozing a part of the Amazon rainforest. What's so special about this particular part of the Amazon? It houses a cannibalistic tribe that has had no contact with the outside world. I'm sure you can gather from my brief description where this story is heading.
"Cannibals?!"
Shot in 2013 but not released until 2015, this relatively low budget film (about five million dollars) flew a bit under the radar, but did get a limited theatrical release. It fared well at the box office, turning a profit, but also faced some backlash regarding the depiction of villagers--I'm not touching that one.
I'm not going to risk making this guy mad
We get pretty much what we expect from Roth--lots of blood and gore, a very slow start before finally getting what we came for, and comedic elements that are way out of place. We'll start with that--at one point, the Americans come up with a plan to get the villagers high, allowing them to escape. Keeping in mind the villagers are cannibals, we immediately see the payoff of this gag.
The entire sequence is absurd, and it takes the viewer further out of the movie. The aforementioned slow build will test your patience a bit, but nothing on the level of the Hostel films. Unfortunately, not a lot is done with the characters in that time--we have a predictably despicable leader of the mission, his predictably mean girlfriend, our survivor girl, and the rest, who are there primarily to add to the body count (not that that's a bad thing). Our lead woman in this one is Lorenza Izzo (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), who, after a bit of a shaky start, does a good job making you care about her character, Justine--she will likely be the only one you care about though. Once it starts, the gore and bloodshed will keep you into this movie as well, even if much of it is a step down from what Roth has brought us before. If you have ever seen Cannibal Holocaust or other similar cannibal villagers movie from the 1970's/early 1980's, you will recognize this movie's nod to them almost immediately...while not a fantastic movie, The Green Inferno is at least more enjoyable than its primary inspiration.
On A Scale Of One To Ten: 5
The Green Inferno Movie Trailer
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