THE GREEN INFERNO
(director/writer: Eli Roth; screenwriter: Guillermo Amoedo/story by Eli Roth; cinematographer: Antonio Quercia; editor: Ernesto Diaz; music: Manuel Riveiro; cast: Lorenza Izzo (Justine), Ariel Levy (Alejandro), Eusebo Arenas (Scott), Daryl Sabara (Lars), Kirby Bliss Blanton (Amy), Sky Ferreira (Kaycee), Magda Apanowicz (Samantha), Nicolas Martinez (Daniel), Aaron Burns (Jonah), Ignacia Allamand (Kara), Richard Burgi (Charles), Ramon Llao (Bald Headhunter), Antonieta Pari (The Elder), Matias Lopez (Carlos); Runtime: 103; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Christopher Woodrow, Molly Conners, Eli Roth, Miguel Asensio Llamas, Nicolas Lopez; High Top Releasing; 2013-USA/Chile-in English, Spanish, & Quechua tribal dialogue)
“Trying to win over the viewers with the strongest stomach for such things as devilish dismemberment is too depraved for me.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Eli Roth (“Cell”/”Hostel”/”Cabin Fever”) directs this gross out torture porn film as a homage to the controversial Cannibal Holocaust (1980), the Italian jungle massacre film that made its bad mark on the midnight circuit in America’s big cities back in the day. Co-writers Roth and Guillermo Amoedo keep Roth’s story extremely violent, trying to win over the viewers with the strongest stomach for such things as devillish dismemberment is too depraved for me. The pic stars the Chilean model Lorenza Izzo, a weak actress who recently married the now out of favor cult director.
The bearded campus radical Alejandro (Ariel Levy) works up the students with a rousing lecture on an American college with the plight of the rainforests in Latin America. A ragtag group of privileged college activists, including the naive college roommates Justine (Lorenza Izzo) and the more cynical Kaycee (Sky Ferreira), in a publicity stunt to gain attention, for the cause, travel into the Peruvian jungle to help save a lost tribe’s habitat. But their plane crashes in the same Amazon jungle they are trying to save and the idealistic students find themselves captives of a hostile tribe of cannibals, ironically whose habitat they are trying to save.
It’s evident that the only thing Roth is trying to do is make the exploitation pic as brutal as possible so he can live up to his bad boy rep. If watching a human being torn apart with a meat-cleaver and being prepped for the cooking pot is your idea of something nourishing, then all I can say is we probably have different tastes.
REVIEWED ON 11/1/2015 GRADE: C+