Eli Roth serves up a platter of warm human meat with The Green Inferno. But is it tasty enough to satiate our thirst for blood?
"Shopping at Wal-Mart again? Please, god no." |
So, here's the deal with Eli Roth movies. The dude can
direct some spectacular horror scenes—stuff that will curl your nose hairs. However,
he has a real problem with directing convincing first acts. Both Cabin Fever and Hostel both suffer from weak beginnings that transition into
balls-to-the-wall gore. While horror films are not known for their elaborate
plots, there are some that manage to do both story and terror equally well. Be
that as it may, character arcs and writing are just not Roth’s strong suit. But what he is great at is giving the
gore hounds what they really want--blood and/or guts.
That brings us to his newest attempt to gross out
moviegoers: The Green Inferno. This
film is definitely meant to be a love letter of sorts to the short-lived
cannibal film craze of the early eighties. Films such as Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal
Ferox shocked audiences everywhere with their mix of hardcore violence
(some of it with real animals, unfortunately), rape and bloody carnage. That time is long gone though and even the
most hardcore of modern horror films still pull their punches when it really
comes down to the nitty-gritty. The Green
Inferno is not as shocking as the films it tries to reproduce, but it comes
damn close and is one of the most brutal mainstream horror films I have seen in
years.
The Green Inferno
follows a similar plot to the original films, with young, mostly white college
students getting stuck out in the Amazon after a series of unfortunate events. The
acting is terrible for the most part, almost to the point of being distracting.
There is really no motivation for why the characters make the decisions that
they do, other than it places them in perilous situations and gets them killed.
Which honestly, is par for the course in these types of films and completely
expected. We don’t give a crap about these people, we just want to see them get
eaten by cannibals. The film does get off to an excruciatingly sluggish start, but
once it gets going the heads really start to roll.
"I have come for your tissues!" |
Score
-Michelle Kisner
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