Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel) seems to relish at the idea of keeping viewers’ wanderlust at bay. Whether it’s the deep south, eastern Europe, or the Amazon jungle; the be all and end all of his movies are pretty much the same – stay where you are because the world is full of crazy shit.
So if its crazy shit you’re looking for, particularly the type stemming from dismemberment, eye-gouging, and the whole medley of the standard barf-enducing torture porn, The Green Inferno just might be for you. Because aside from that, this movie has pretty much nothing else to offer. It’s the cinematic version of consuming a tub of peanut butter – a guilty pleasure and nothing more.
The plot of The Green Inferno is fairly simple. A group of first-world college kids, trying their hand at some social media activism, travel to the Amazon to save a part of the rainforest and the tribe residing in it. These locals they’re trying to protect turn out to be cannibals and they get captured and eaten one by one. Fairly simple stuff.
You’ve got the virgin, the fat nice guy, the stoner, the “we’re all gonna die!” screamer, and the douchebag. Other clichés include: the missing GPS/phones have no signal, the object with sentimental value, and, of course, the teens have drugs. Oddly though, gasgas as they may be, these genre conventions and characters work and are pretty entertaining to watch. None of the ensemble feels too forced ( except maybe Sky Ferreira’s “the roommate” character, but she’s just a glorified cameo so it doesn’t matter) and it’s pretty interesting to see how such a relatable concept like campus “slacktivism” can get flipped on its heels. There’s this schadenfreude-ish glee from seeing these pretentious kids get their nasty comeuppance but at the same time you feel sort of feel bad for them because they’re simply naive and just wanted to help; and I think that’s what makes The Green Inferno sort of work.
The Green Inferno faults lie though in it’s trying to be more than what it is – a full-on unadulterated gorefest. The movie’s first act tries to characterize these characters beyond the genre-required meat bags that they are and for that it stumbles. Somehow Eli Roth thought that he could create more depth by putting his cast in a Degrassi-like college setting with the usual “I don’t know my place in this world” and the “I used to be a classical musician for mom but I don’t do that anymore” dilemmas. Instead of building natural motivations and nuances to these characters, what we get are lengthy expositions on their backgrounds and just plain weak and cheesy dialogue. Even the “social commentary” Roth so painstakingly wants to push is so exposition-driven that things at times feel preachy.
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Even downright to its ending, the movies tries to insert plot twists and turns that just beg desperately for audience admiration. It tries hard to make the plot more dense, setting up possible sequels, and hopefully making people see that this is more than just a homage to bloody, disgusting, hard-to-watch cannibal movies – it’s not. The Green Inferno shines best when it stops trying and just forgets its agenda. The movie would have greatly benefited if it tapered its first arc and it’s ending, giving us just straight out the thrilling monstrosity, that cannibalistic stomach-churner, the movie’s middle is.
Visually, there are quite some lush scenery to behold. What would one expect from a movie set in the Amazon? Contrasted with the blood red frequently spurting from this meatfest of a movie, there is a charm in a twisted Wonka Nerds kind of way. You get the influence from the Warner Herzog movies of yore but it’s really not quite there for one to actually call it great. It’s okay but it could have been better.
I guess Eli Roth movies are not for everybody. They are indeed jock-written, bro-driven, splatter movies with masturbation jokes, farts, sex, and drugs. But again, that’s what his fans come for and I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. The Green Inferno is, yes, a fratboy’s fever dream, but it is also a thrilling take on the cannibal movies of the past set to present day. It is dumb, intense, and filled with bloody good kills – and that’s just what makes it grotesquely enjoyable.
