The Green Inferno (2013)

The Green Inferno (2013) Directed by Eli Roth

The cannibal movie was a small, short-lived subgenre of horror in the 80s, the two big keystones being “Cannibal Holocaust” and “Cannibal Ferox.” Since that time there has been very few traditional cannibal movies, and as far as my recollection, none have been on the big screen, only direct to video. Green Inferno was Eli Roth’s homage to the genre and was in production hell for the better part of two years, so the hype was big. There have been mixed reviews on the movie, and I think the hype and audience have something to do with that. To me, cannibal movies are an acquired taste and you have to be in the right mindset to watch them. I personally waited since September to see this movie, seeing that I don’t have many friends that live within an hour from me, and basically no friends that are into horror. Now that The Green Inferno is on Amazon prime rental, I shelled out the $4.99 and rented it, and decided to give you guys a review, you’re welcome!

The film opens with a girl, Justine waking up in her dorm and looking out the window into the courtyard at a group of “activists.” I say it with quotes because if you have been to college you know the type of people, the ones that “care” about the misfortunes and tragedies in the world so they can seem noble. The group is having a hunger strike to get janitors health insurance or something like that. Justine shows a little interest in the group because she seems to actually have a heart. She then goes to class with her roommate, who’s name I cannot remember for the life of me. While in class the professor lectures about female circumcision in other continents such as Africa and South America. Justine is appalled by the act and thinks its barbaric and unnecessary. The professor explains that the people use it as a rite of passage from girl to woman in Amazonian tribes. After class a big black dude named Jonah that kind of looks like Packers tight end Richard Rodgers talks to Justine and says basically that he was impressed by her strong opinion on the barbaric act and invites her to a meeting with the rest of the activists.

At the meeting the activists, lead by Alejandro and his girlfriend Kara, talk about taking a trip to Peru to stop deforestation in the rainforest. The group starts planning the trip and they hope to keep people from destroy the tribes’ land. Their goal is to film logging crews with their cell phones and stream the footage to raise awareness. Justine’s dad is an attorney for the UN and she suggests that she could bring attention to the issue through her dad. A dude named Carlos funds the whole thing, and he loads the students up on a small plane to Peru. They make it to Peru and Carlos scores some weed for a guy named Lars. They get on boats and travel into the rainforest. They land ashore and change clothes to the shirts they made with their group name on them and cover them with safety yellow jumpsuits to look like loggers. After that they approach the trees, and chain themselves to them with masks on. They start filming when the loggers show up with guns and try to shoot Justine. They are spared and sent back to the boats and Justine realizes she was used because no one would kill the daughter of a UN attorney.

The group makes it back to the plan and they realize that their video has become viral, already?! I want to know what cell provider they have because they get service deep in the amazon, that’s awesome! Whilst celebrating on the plane, the motor blows out and the plane crashes. During the crash the copilot gets a branch through the head, which actually made me say “Oh shit!” The others scramble around trying to find their bearings when darts and arrows start flying around from tribesmen. Everyone but Justine, Alejandro, Kara, Jonah, Lars, Amy, Samantha, and Daniel survive and look for the GPS phone. Kara is suddenly killed with arrows to the head and the rest of the group is knocked out with darts. They awaken on boats of a native tribe and are taken to the village. Once in the village the group is imprisoned in a wooden cage. The female elder of the tribe inspects each member and chooses Jonah for something. He is taken to a big rock and restrained by a group of tribesmen. The elder then takes a claw and rips out Jonah’s eye and eats it, she does the same to the second eye and calls for the big black and yellow tribesman. The big guy grabs an axe like weapon and proceeds to cut off Jonah’s limbs while he screams in agony. The others look on in horror as Jonah is murdered, cooked and eaten by the tribe. Alejandro reveals that the protest was fake and Carlos was a logging operation rival. He explains that the plane most likely was fucked with and that’s why it crashed.

For some reason either Amy or Samantha, they look a lot alike, sorry people, decides to have the blow shits in the cage while the others gag. This scene is a typical Eli Roth WTF scene, because it’s way out of tone with the rest of the movie. You have all this serious and gory crap going on then suddenly this girl shits and the sound effects are that of an Adam Sandler movie. The other blonde girl, the first blonde girl’s lesbo lover, decides she can make a break for it and climb out of the cage. Of course she is instantly darted and passes out. When she comes to the elder inspects each girl with a claw in the vaginas, she discovers that Justine is a virgin and they take her away. The other members form a plan that they will throw Alejandro’s iphone into the woods and the tribesman will run after it , they do that and Samantha runs off, she is confident because she “used to run track” ok girl, good luck. She makes it to a boat and takes cover. In the next scene Justine is returned in her underwear and the prisoners are given food by the tribe and they eat it. Then realize that what they ate was actually Samantha, after seeing the tribe had cut off all Sam’s tattoos and were posing with the pieces of flesh on their bodies. Amy freaks out knowing she ate her lover and smashes a bowl, then uses the shard to slit her throat, thus dying.

The group takes the weed that Carlos gave to Lars and stuffs it into the mouth of Amy. The tribe takes Amy and they cut her limbs off and cook her. After the tribe eats Amy the weed makes them high and Justine and Daniel escape. Lars tries to follow them but Alejandro darts him, because he’s a dick. Justine and Daniel escape the village and make their way down the river. Lars comes to and is lying on the ground with two tribesmen staring at him laughing. He tries to distract them with stupid hand tricks, until they grab his arm and bite a chunk out of it. He screams and tries to run, but the overwhelming number of tribesmen tackle him and begin to eat him alive. Justine and Daniel make it back to the plane wreck and they grab the GPS phone out of Kara’s pocket but the tribe shows up and recaptures them.

Now back in the village, Justine wakes up while a couple of women slather her with some odd oily substance. Daniel is now tied to a stake and slathered with a dark green goo. Justine struggles but is covered with white paint while she’s naked. Huge ants start climbing up Daniel and bite the living shit out of him.   The elder attemps to perform female circumcision on Justine when suddenly logging machines distract the tribe to the jungle, this allows Justine to escape with the help of a small boy. She tries to help Daniel but he asks for her to kill him, the young boy knocks him out with some spore and then slits his throat. Justine and the boy run off into the jungle and are noticed by a couple remaining tribesmen. Justine leaves Alejandro behind to be murdered by the tribe. She is chased to a river where she is trapped between the tribe and a leopard. She slowly walks past the leopard and stumbles across the tribe fighting with the loggers. They slaughter the tribe and take Justine back home.

Now in New York she explains to her father what happened, but not the truth. She changes the story saying that the loggers slaughtered the tribe and the tribe was nothing but nice to her and her friends. Then her face is used on shirts to promote activism on campus by those unaware that he was a dick. After the credits a satellite map of the forest appears while a phone conversation between Justine and Alejandro’s sister takes place. His sister has found him on a satellite GPS image, which zooms in and the movie ends.

The Green Inferno wasn’t great, with that being said it wasn’t bad either. What we got was a nice homage to the original cannibal movies. If you don’t like cannibal movies, don’t watch it! It’s intense, it’s gory, and it’s unrealistic. Not everything has to be 100% realistic; it is a damn movie people! No that small amount of weed baked into a corpse wouldn’t make the tribesman all goofy, it is not possible, but it’s a movie, fiction! Sometimes people have preconceived notions and opinions on directors like Eli Roth and Rob Zombie. No matter what these directors produce, they’ll be bashed. Yes Eli is kind of a douche at times, and yes he has the weird scenes in his movies like “PANCAKES!” but as a whole I do enjoy his movies. Eli is a big horror fan and knows his stuff, it’s sad that we have to wait forever for him to make movies, this being the first one since Hostel 2 in 2007, yikes. I read on twitter people saying that Green Inferno was crazy or nuts. Maybe it’s just me, the desensitized horror fan that I am, I really didn’t find Green Inferno that disturbing, I mean…I have seen A Serbian Film and Martyrs. The gore was pretty decent in this movie, nothing too disgusting but again it may be because I’m just desensitized to it now. Everyone rips on the acting but they obviously haven’t seen some of the crappy 80s slashers that I have seen, not only that, have they seen The Hills Have Eyes 2?! That was some of the worst acting I have ever seen in a theatrical movie. In conclusion, don’t take this too seriously! Just sit on your couch, turn your brain off and enjoy this over the top cannibal flick for what it is, entertainment. Not every movie must have a super solid plot and Tom Hanks level acting, some movies are made to entertain you, and Green Inferno did just that for me. I would give this a B, it’s not great, it’s not as extreme as I hoped, but I did enjoy it and I would watch it again if it was on Netflix.