‘The Green Inferno,’ Eli Roth’s latest directorial effort,
is both a love letter to ‘70’s grindhouse exploitation cinema and a gorehound’s
delight. A contemporary update of
Italian cannibal movies such as ‘Cannibal Ferox’ and ‘Cannibal Holocaust,’ ‘The
Green Inferno’ is just as shocking and violent, but surely fans of Roth’s body
of work (‘Cabin Fever’ and ‘Hostel’ parts 1 and 2) would expect nothing less.
TGI is simply “delicious” in its irony. A group of young idealistic, tree-hugging
college kids travel to the Amazons in Peru to prevent the destruction of an
indigenous tribe’s village by an evil oil corporation. After getting their message viral, the small
single-engine Cessna carrying them on their way out crashes and they become captive
to the very people they’re trying to save.
And surprise! They’re cannibals. They don’t do it like in the cartoons,
either.
Like ‘Cannibal Ferox’ and ‘Cannibal Holocaust,’ TGI plays
with our expectations and diminishes our disgust by portraying the victim as
despicable villain, in this instance the tree-huggers’ suave Ricky Martin-esque
Latin leader and hypocrite-extraordinaire Alejandro (Ariel Levy). The
final scene in which the lone survivor was being interviewed is also eerily
similar to the one in ‘Cannibal Ferox,’ no doubt just the way Roth intended it.
Let’s face it, exploitation B-movies
such as this isn’t for the faint of heart or queasy of stomach, but if you’re
game you’ll find it a “glorious throwback to the drive-in movies of your
youth: bloody, gripping, hard to watch, but you can’t look away.” That was a tweet from none other than the great Master-of-Horror
Stephen King, by the way.
Grade: B+
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