Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Wednesday Review: The Green Inferno

Supposedly, the tribe in this movie has never been filmed before. Eli Roth claimed that he had to introduce them to the concept of cinema by showing them Cannibal Holocaust. According to Roth the tribe thought that a movie about cannibals in the Amazon was hilarious. So, I can only presume the tribe felt they were making a comedy.

They're not far from the truth, however. Much of the violence in this movie is so over-the-top it's hard not to laugh, and the tribe constantly ham up their performances. Many scenes look like the villagers are just barely keeping a straight face. One scene even features the cannibals getting high on pot. This seems like a good thing for the prisoners, until they get the munchies. Many of the failed escape attempts are also downright comical, showing the tribe as capable of an almost godlike level of vigilance. It's like the prisoners are trying to get away from a cannibalistic Bugs Bunny.

Above all, what surprises me about this film is that it actually seems smart. The last thing I expected from an Eli Roth film was a degree of intelligence, and I'm still not sure that it wasn't accidental, or perhaps left-over from Cannibal Holocaust (which I still have yet to see in it's entirety). Halfway through the film we're told “it's all connected, the good guys and the bad.” As I watched, I realized this was a driving theme of the film: the savage, selfish nature of humanity. In the end, you just have to decide who you're going to screw over, not whether or not you're going to screw people over.

The movie also comes across as a giant middle-finger to paternalistic Western views about other cultures. The villagers of this movie, while coming across as basically human, are just as brutal and savage as the corporate forces that want to destroy them. Some people are already trying to call racism, but to me the movie is about the entire nature of humanity, not about the evil of any one group.

The premise of the movie is that a group of activists go to the Amazon to sabotage a Natural Gas company attempting to wipe out a local tribe. They succeed, and then bribe the officials who arrested them into letting them go. However, their plane ends up crashing near the village, and the cannibalistic tribe captures the villagers, and begins eating them one-by-one.

Despite the humor, I will definitely say that this is a movie that deserves a trigger warning. Anyone who has an issue with sexual violence in particular would likely be bothered by one or two scenes. To Roth's credit, the sexual violence is the one part of the film that isn't remotely played for laughs. It's just horrifying.

That isn't even going into the gore which, while unrealistic, is still quite brutal. I could deal with it, but I can deal with a lot of things most people can't. If you get squicky, this is not the movie for you.

I'm quite surprised that this movie has gotten such a low rating from critics. As of this writing it's Rotten Tomatoes score is 39%. Certainly it's not for everyone, but judging it for what it is the movie is excellent. It's a film about white people being eaten by cannibals, what did you expect?

No comments:

Post a Comment