The Green Inferno (2013) Poster

User Reviews

Review this title
390 Reviews
Sort by:
Filter by Rating:
5/10
Gore-hounds will be satisfied, people expecting a good horror movie won't be.
lnvicta18 October 2015
The Green Inferno is a standard Eli Roth fare - gore galore, cannibalism, and occasional humor - set in the Amazon rainforest. The acting is terrible right off the bat, but thankfully it isn't an issue halfway through the movie when the body count starts up. The characters themselves are paper thin, only about 3 of which are given actual personalities while the others are just fodder for the natives.

The premise of the movie is disturbing and will sound appealing to most horror fans, including myself, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Yes, the gore is done very well; as usual Roth uses great practical effects to create some wince-inducing scenes. The problem is that the first half of the movie feels like a student film. Really bad acting, horrific dialogue, and the documentary style filming doesn't help at all. It's not so much an issue once the characters are captured, but you aren't able to get immersed into the world from the get-go so you're never truly frightened or concerned for them when the bloodshed begins.

The biggest issue is that The Green Inferno isn't scary in the slightest. Apart from a cheap jump scare near the end, there's little to no suspense or tension in the movie. It's just a linear storyline with characters getting killed off one by one with very little left to the imagination. It also isn't funny. There's maybe two times I chuckled at the tongue-in-cheek jokes. Most of them come across as forced, partly due to the acting and partly due to the jokes not being very funny. Roth tries for a darker, more disturbing atmosphere and he succeeds, but he sacrificed the potential fun to be had with the film. It's not terrible - Eli Roth fans will get exactly what they're expecting - but it also isn't anything new. The Green Inferno is a decent effort but a wholly mediocre movie watching experience.
205 out of 243 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
5/10
Eli Roth returns with an uneven cannibal flick
Red-Barracuda21 June 2014
Eli Roth is a director whose fame certainly goes before him. These days you don't really get many directors unashamedly dedicated to the horror genre like you did in years gone by. I like Eli Roth for this reason and I do find him a somewhat engaging, funny and entertaining guy. On the flip side I would have to say that I have found his output to be somewhat patchy and uneven. And frustratingly sparse at that. The Green Inferno is his first feature film as director since Hostel: Part II from way back in 2007! It's a long time to be out of the game. The question would have to be has he came back in a good way? Well, despite the undoubted promise of the central idea, it's a film that is kind of as frustrating as most of his other work.

The basic idea here is to bring back a type of movie that only really existed briefly over thirty years ago. The cannibal film was a particularly notorious sub-genre. Most of the films got banned here in the UK; some still remain so to this day in their uncut forms. Their combination of graphic violence, sexual assault and real animal killing made them real bad boys of the horror genre. Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is the one film that Roth has mentioned in particular as an influence and for this viewer it is easily one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen. Its docudrama, found footage style mixed with a proper mean-spiritedness made it a pretty gruelling film but very well made. The Green Inferno takes a decidedly different approach to its material and it's not always a successful one. Where Holocaust was relentlessly confrontational, Roth's film is often quite jokey. This approach means that the tone overall fluctuates wildly but it definitely dissipates the overall threat posed by the cannibals. The choice of protagonists points to the change immediately in that it centres on a group of eco aware students who travel into the middle of the Amazonian rain-forest to stage a viral protest against some environment destroying workers, needless to say things take a bad turn and they wind up captive by a tribe of cannibals. The very fact that the film centres on a group of students makes this film surely the first cannibal film that doubles up as a teen movie! It's an awkward combination with a pretty ropey script and – the main girl played by Lorenzo Izzo aside - unlikable characters. The social commentary is not so unexpected for this type of movie, as Cannibal Holocaust had that too but it is modernised considerably here – the target is after all viral warriors who are more interested in being famous than for doing the right thing.

So how does it work simply as a horror movie? Well, it certainly has its fair share of gory violence. But it has less impact than it should because of the silly jokey tone that permeates it, even once the students have been captured. Because they aren't taking their situation seriously enough, it's hard for us in the audience to either unfortunately. The on-location photography certainly adds a fair bit it has to be said and the cannibals themselves are quite distinctive too, in particular the more prominent members of the tribe were somewhat creepy. I can't help feeling though that if Roth had reigned in the silly stuff and went full-on with this material with a more disciplined approach then it would have made for a far better film. It feels slightly like a missed opportunity and I am sad to say this as I was really on this one's side and had quite a bit of optimism for it.
148 out of 192 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
4/10
-Writer-director Eli Roth's homage to the Italian cannibal movies...
AlsExGal24 November 2019
...Of the 70's and early 80's. A group of college students travel to a remote Peruvian location to protest a natural gas company's encroachment on an isolated, primitive native village. The students initial efforts are a success, but when their plane out crashes into the jungle, the natives aren't exactly thankful for the Americans' good deeds, preferring to butcher them and eat them.

Roth skewers Western do-good-ism and liberal interference with foreign cultures, showing that even the best intentions can (literally) come back to bite them. The lead performance from Lorenza Izzo is good as the freshman student whose naivete is shattered in more ways than one. The rest of the cast just has to scream a lot. The violence is extreme, the blood copious, and the gore plentiful, but it becomes just a bunch of latex and Karo syrup after a while. I realized watching this that Roth seems to have specialized in the fear of the traveler in foreign lands, whether it's city folk in the deep country (Cabin Fever), Americans in Eastern Europe (the Hostel films), or South America (Aftershock and this movie). I would have given this a higher rating if it weren't for the nonsensical ending.
11 out of 15 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Big disappointment
Sweet_and_Lowdown7726 September 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Since Eli Roth broke out on the scene with his indie CABIN FEVER, he's never stopped talking about how much influence Cannibal movies were to him growing up.

Well, it didn't translate to his own film.

This was laughably bad. Bad writing, acting & directing. The one good thing was the look of the Cannibal tribe. They looked like a remote tribe of cannibals.

There are WAY too many issues to list. I'll keep it to 3.

1) A couple ounces of weed stuffed into the mouth of a human, who's then cooked would NOT turn an entire village into goofy messes. Unfortunately, this wasn't just a "dumb" horror film moment. It was a plot point. Roth & his co-writer NEEDED the village to be distracted for 2 of the kids to escape. AND THIS IS WHAT THEY CAME UP WITH?

The MAIN problem Roth has is with the villagers. He clearly doesn't know what he wants them to be and he doesn't take a side. The Villagers are shown as victims and just in their actions in some scenes and then barbaric, erratic & just vicious for vicious sake in others.

While I understand they are cannibals, Roth doesn't give the audience any clue he knows who they are. They seem to have principles & traditions, then seem to ignore them. They seem to be extremely well organized one moment, and then the 3 Stooges the next. They are expert sharpshooters hitting people 50 yards away through heavy foliage one scene, and the next won't/can't hit a character in the wide open.

Why were some humans sedated at the plane crash & why were others bow & arrowed to the head?

2) The Almost female circumcision scene. This scene served no purpose, it was completely "attempted shock" for "attempted shock" purpose and not for anything that in any way made sense. I say "attempted" shock, but nothing happens. It was supposed to make you squirm, but this scene was stupid & shows that not only did Roth NOT know the natives he created, but, IMO, took a massive step BACK as a filmmaker.

We are told early in the film's WAY TOO LONG exposition setup, that tribes around the world, including in S. America, view the horrible act of female circumcision as a right of passage from being a girl to being a woman. Horrible but that's what they think.

When the humans are brought into the village, they're treated like food. The pigs are kicked out of the pen & the humans put in the pen.

Now, either the villagers are truly cannibals or they simply eat the captured people they believe to be enemies. The kids weren't their enemies, but they were wearing the clothes of the construction guys, so they mistake them for their enemy.

So, they are either simply eating the kids b/c they're food or that consuming the bodies of the enemies make them stronger.

So why on Earth would they care about circumcising their food before they consume it? Why would they care if the lead girl goes from being a "girl" to "woman" before they eat her?

Roth goes out of his way to explain that this is a time honored tradition for the natives. Why would they show their food/enemy the same respect they show their blood? Do they circumcise the pigs before they cook them too?

No. It was all simply to make the audience wince. And it didn't.

3) Lastly - and most importantly - it wasn't scary. I have to wonder if Roth even ever watched ANY Cannibal movies.

Roth may have peaked with HOSTEL. I personally think HOSTEL 2 was better, but I think I'm alone there. This was a huge letdown.
89 out of 123 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
1/10
Spoiler
baadesterling28 September 2015
Warning: Spoilers
One of the worst movies I have ever seen. Acting, writing and directing were just horrid. I actually watched this today, came home, signed up for IMDb just to say how awful this movie was. Stupid diarrhea scene for no reason. They just witnessed their friend hacked to pieces and eaten, then a girl explodes her bowels in the corner of their cage. What is their reaction? Total disgust and act like they cant get far enough away from her, really? They acted as if it was the worst thing that had happened on their trip. Then the random masturbation scene? Served no purpose. After everything that was done to the lead actress; beating, raped, almost had her genitals mutilated and she doesn't tell anyone out in the world that these monsters are running around the woods? SO DUMB I CANT FATHOM IT!!! While watching this movie I felt as though I would rather be on the cannibals table then in the movie seat. Don't waste your time or money on this mindless drivel.
151 out of 222 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
7/10
Gore galore, but a slavish re-tread of the Deodato/Lenzi films. Not that that's entirely bad thing . . .
Coolestmovies8 September 2013
Warning: Spoilers
NOTE: slight spoiler in the second last paragraph, duly noted below.

I've always found Eli Roth's films to be mixed bags. GREEN INFERNO is by far his best picture, but as in most of his other films his limitations as a dialogue writer are foregrounded too often, albeit thankfully to nowhere near the extent they were in the RZA's execrable vanity project MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS. His character development skills, however, show unexpected signs of refinement during his six year absence from the director's seat.

In particular, Roth's take on environmental activists -- all of the main characters in Green Inferno are self-serious, latte-drinking "save the rain forest" university types who infiltrate a clear-cutting operation deep in the Amazon jungle and chain themselves to the logging machinery in order to protest "corporate greed" via satellite linkup with their iPhones -- cuts effectively deep for a filmmaker not usually given to social criticism.

Most criticism that could be leveled at the film's dialogue and subtext, however, is irrelevant since the drawing card for horror buffs will without question be the exotic, "dangerous" location (which promises enough stories for multiple gory sequels, according to Roth), and the copious scenes of torture, dismemberment and cannibalism that ensue when the protagonists' plane -- possibly due to sabotage, it's later implied -- crashes into the forest on the return trip home (the opening protest mission is entirely self-contained, and actually successful, or so it seems at first). Enter the natives -- reportedly played by an authentic Chilean tribe, albeit one not prone to dining on human flesh -- and the feasting begins.

The grisly makeup effects are by a team led by legends Gregory Nicotero and Howard Berger (who aren't credited at IMDb as of this writing, but ARE listed in the opening credits of the film), and they certainly deliver, particularly the squishy, screaming dismemberment that sets the ball rolling. As far as cannibal movies go, the special effects in GREEN INFERNO are certainly the most elaborate to date, but considering the most notable (and notorious) run of this genre happened thirty years ago, that probably goes without saying.

Manuel Riveiro's full orchestral lends the film an appropriately ominous sense of portent -- especially when it accompanies sweeping flyover shots of dense jungle -- and a feeling of scope and import that belies the fact that GREEN INFERNO is ultimately a throwback/valentine to the works of Ruggerio Deodato and Umberto Lenzi, almost to the letter, in particular Lenzi's CANNIBAL FEROX (aka MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY). Speaking of those two, Roth's film is actually dedicated to Deodato, and the credits list most if not all of the films in this sub-genre that one should probably see or at least be aware of going in or coming out. At TIFF, Roth claimed this list (along with numerous tweet handles in the final roll) was simply a great way to insert some marketing magic directly into the film itself, but one could also read it as a preemptive strike against critics (and fans) who might realize just how shamelessly he treads familiar ground with this show and attempt to dock points for it. Mind you, if enough future audience members haven't seen any of the late 70's or early 80's Italian cannibal pictures -- and let's face it, a whole new generation or two probably doesn't even know they exist -- that might bode well for this picture, especially via DVD/streaming, as there's nothing like experiencing a dedicated cannibal movie for the first time, and with a strong stomach. It's also now very likely that some of GREEN INFERNO's predecessors will get fancy new Blu-ray re-releases thanks to the existence of this film. So there's that.

As for gratuitous skin -- always a component of the originals -- Roth treats us to more of Daryl Sabara's junk than most viewers probably ever thought they'd care to see, for what that's worth, while for the likely-to-be-predominantly-male demographic of this type of picture, Loranna Izzo spends a fair portion of the final act bounding through the rain forest in a skimpy little muslin jungle bikini (and -- SPOILER AHEAD!! -- appears oh-so-briefly topless during her FGM "preparation" scene), while she and a couple of the other actresses have fleeting moments sans pants getting "examined" by the tribe's cataracted, jaundice-skinned resident witch doctor and gynecologist. Such as it is, the skin quotient -- when it's not being ripped and chopped apart, and cooked and eaten, at least -- is more or less on par with the original films. Thankfully Roth and company avoid scenes of animal cruelty (even faked) altogether, so those who uncomfortably recall such unpleasantness from the Deodato/Lenzi films can rest easy; it's only the humans who get eaten this time out.

Finally, a dangling subplot involving one character will undoubtedly serve as the foundation of the just-announced sequel, which reportedly begins production almost immediately. To be honest, I'd almost forgotten about this character until the drive home, which was probably the point all along.
94 out of 124 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
2/10
Actually kind of disappointing after years of being built up
MattBirk25 September 2015
If Eli Roth is known for one thing, it's that he is known for high levels of violence in his films and pushing the envelope. And The Green Inferno is no exception, it's easily the most graphic movie of the year to receive a theatrical release. The movie features some extremely cringe-worthy scenes where the villages show no mercy to the young students. Of course, this is the focal point of the movie, the gore/torture of these somewhat arrogant, twenty somethings.

Yes, there is some social commentary in the movie, mostly poking fun at today's society and how everyone wants to 'appear' to be fighting for a cause when in fact, they are doing very little. And yes, he has a point here, but it isn't as thought provoking as he wants it to be, especially once the carnage starts and those ideas fly out the window. Only for those ideas to awkwardly return at the end of the movie.

There is not much to say about this movie other than the obvious, it's extremely violent, nothing more nothing less. The Green Inferno is obviously a homage to those 80s cannibalistic horror movies. Which means the body count is high and the foreigners are going to be punished by the natives in some of the most cruel ways imaginable (at least since the SAW series). But I can't help but feel a bit letdown after years of build up with the movie being stuck in release hell.

While The Green Inferno isn't on par with other strong horror contenders for best horror movie of 2015, it is easily the nastiest, most violent movie of the year. Thus, if the torture-porn genre is your cup of tea, then look no further, you've found your next fix!
72 out of 106 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
7/10
Waiting for the next plate of raw food
niunoniotro4 June 2023
Eli Roth is a director whose style is evolving, reaching a more refined level. In his beginnings he was much more direct and dirty, if I may say so, which has its advantages, because he gave you what you were looking for, a no-holds-barred gore, which sometimes turned into real fun-fests, but at other times became excessively repetitive and flat. This level up helps to cover up what for me, is his biggest Achilles heel, his limited level as a dialogue writer, which still hasn't improved. Focusing on The Green Inferno, we have a clear homage to the Italian cannibal cinema of the 70s and 80s. If you're familiar with Cannibal Holocaust or Cannibal Ferox and liked them, you'll surely love Green Inferno, but if you disliked those, I don't think this is the film for you. Because let's face it, when you're about to see a film whose plot is cannibalism in the Amazon, well, Roth isn't fooling you. He may offer it to you in smaller quantities than you expected and yet it's still more substantial than the average level of horror today. Perhaps what most sets him apart from the older films is that first part of the film with a social critique never before seen in Roth's filmography. The presentation of the characters, both activists and indigenous and their interpretations are more than correct. You get to empathize with some of them, which may not be very pleasant when you know what awaits them... The music by Manuel Riveiro is a success, as well as the photography by Antonio Quercia and the FX by Ozzy Alvarez.

Because let's not fool ourselves, hell may be green, but its smell is red.
6 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
1/10
A good reminder of what to not do while making a movie.
beastep228 September 2015
Warning: Spoilers
The Green Inferno

I'm going to break my review down into a few sections. I'm writing my review as a film student but not trying to say I'm an expert in anyway. I don't like to leave reviews on films I found to be awful but after watching The Green Inferno I feel like I have to.

Synopsis:

A group of college students (activists) travel to the Amazon to save the rain forest and find themselves battling to save their own lives.

Acting:

Immediately, the acting was poor. I don't know what type of college the writers went to or are trying to model their story after, but I have never seen college students act like that. It seemed too unnatural. My friends along with myself kept pointing out how the acting didn't seem natural and that the actors were not very good. Throughout the movie however the acting did get better. So that's an upside I suppose.

Directing:

I felt like I was watching a movie that didn't have a director. What I mean by this is that it appeared as a movie that had someone running around with a camera shooting actors who have never acted before. I felt like the director didn't care about his movie at all.

Cinematography:

The visual experience was far from enjoyable. There is one particular shot that I'd like to talk about. There was a scene in which the actors were talking about something on the side of the river. Clearly something I was supposed to see. The camera shake was so intense that I couldn't even see what they were talking about. I'm sure it was some type of jungle cat but not really sure. The overused camera shake was throughout the entire movie.

Editing:

It looked as if they didn't have it in the budget to have the film color graded. Looked like the entire thing was shot on a cheap dslr and edited in iMovie.

Story:

The story would have been fine if it weren't for the following, the scene where Alejandro was masturbating in the cage, the scene where the tribe were high off of a small amount of Marijuana cooked within a body, and pretty much every death scene was bad.

I have never felt like leaving a movie theater early until watching The Green Inferno. I had to force myself to stay until the end simply because I paid to watch it. I like to watch movies whether they be great films or terrible movies. The Green Inferno goes to the top of my terrible list. I do not recommend this movie to anyone.
45 out of 69 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
7/10
Good if you're into gore
lumevenus10 June 2023
So first of all if you're not into gore or slather elements I wouldn't suggest watching it. I myself had pretty high expectations of this movie , since people told me it's very disturbing but I was disappointed. The movie isn't more brutal then any other cannibal movie ; well at least in my opinion. Honestly the Movie is just like wrong turn but with more cannibals and in a different terrain.the beginning was unnecessarily long ; especially one part where two of the people go taking a piss ; like the scene was so long and unnecessary in my opinion. Basically it's just a normal cannibal movie that's overrated in my opinion ye.
4 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
1/10
The green garbage
emking-7559628 November 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Just awful that's all I can say about this movie. I had high hopes with Roths favorite movie being the Great Cannibal Holocast. He should not have been allowed the use the old working title. The plot was OK I guess but the acting was total garbage, with one good gore scene (first death). After that it's all down hill and very predictable to the point of stupidity! We all knew the necklace was going to save her. I saw a saving grace possible at the end when the military was gunning down the cannibals she should have been mistaken for one of them and killed!! Way better ending to a horrible disgrace of a movie with about as much intelligence as a rock. I can't waste any more time on this -1 of 10 movie.

Thanks for your time EMK
36 out of 54 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
10/10
Uplifting
billcosbymightbemydad24 October 2017
Warning: Spoilers
The Green Inferno is a charming little flick, perfect for cozying up and enjoying with the family. Its structured with profound emotion rippling through our hearts as we cheer on a wonderful cast on an adventure into unknown plains. This movie is full of touching moments between broad characters with so much chemistry we cant help but fall in love with them. Its such a joy to see them interact with one another. There is as much stamina in this picture as there is passion. It captures you into its heavily spirited sentiment and never lets go. As the story progresses it only burrows deeper into your soul and leaves you in a state of peaceful wonderment. Don't put off watching this monumental cinematic eye opener any longer.
143 out of 231 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
7/10
"The Green Inferno" is a bloody good movie, but not as bloody as you'd think.
CleveMan6625 September 2015
Think about the first time you rode some big, new roller coaster. As you waited in line and contemplated what lay ahead, your heart started beating faster. When you occupied your seat, and the picture in front of you began to move, you found yourself wondering what you had gotten yourself into. As you arrived at that first really scary moment, you resisted the urge to close your eyes, even as others around you were enjoying the thrill by thrusting their arms into the air. From that point, everything was a blur of shouts and screams, ups and downs, punctuated by brief moments of relative stillness. Then, suddenly, the ride ended. You were surprised how quickly it went by and, even though you felt a little queasy, you were glad you had the experience. You even may have commented that it wasn't as bad as you thought it was going to be, and that you kind of enjoyed it, all as you started to look forward to that next uncomfortable challenge. You just rode a scary new coaster, but might as well have been experiencing the uncomfortable thrill of a new Eli Roth movie… one like "The Green Inferno" (R, 1:40), for example.

Personal feelings about graphically violent movies like the "Saw" franchise or Roth's own "Hostel" films aside, Roth's film "The Green Inferno" has a colorful history. The film traces its roots to cannibal-themed movies made in Italy during the 1970s and 80s. Roth's 2015 resurrection of this controversial horror sub-genre draws most directly from 1980's "Cannibal Holocaust", a movie so realistic that director Ruggero Deodato was arrested and put on trial for the murder of some of the actors in the film. (Deodato was only exonerated after he gathered all of his actors together for a TV show appearance and then demonstrated in court the special effects used to create the actors' "deaths".) That movie's working title was "The Green Inferno", a title which was eventually applied to the most gruesome scenes in "Cannibal Holocaust", specifically, the film within the film that purports to show footage from a missing documentary film crew. (This was the first use of the "found footage" or "pseudo-documentary" device, which was popularized in the U.S. by 1999's "The Blair Witch Project".) The title "The Green Inferno" was later also used as an alternate title for the 1988 sequel "Cannibal Holocaust II". Eli Roth filmed "The Green Inferno" in the jungles of Peru in 2012. His film opened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. It was scheduled to be released in the U.S. in September 2014, but financial problems at the film's production company led to the film being pulled. Blumhouse Productions stepped in and the company's multi-platform releasing arm, BH Tilt, released "The Green Inferno" on September 25, 2015.

After a brief scene of bulldozers flattening a rain forest in the Amazon, the narrative of Roth's cannibal film starts innocuously on the streets of New York City. College freshman Justine (Lorenza Izzo) and her roommate, Kaycee (singer-songwriter Sky Ferreira), are annoyed by the student activists protesting outside their window, but Justine is also intrigued. She attends one of the group's meetings in which their charismatic student leader, Alejandro (Ariel Levy), discusses their plan to save a village in Peru from being overrun by bulldozers paving the way for a natural gas mining operation. The students plan to dress as workers, chain themselves to trees and bulldozers, then live stream video from their cell phones to get the world's attention – and keep themselves from being shot by the armed mercenaries which protect the operation. Justine's dad (Richard Burgi), a lawyer at the U.N., expresses his reservations, but Justine goes on what she naively believes will be a weekend trip to save a native tribe from extinction.

After landing in Peru, everything goes according to plan until their small plane crashes in the Amazonian jungle. Several of the students die in the crash, but the survivors are captured by the very tribe that the group was there to save. Not speaking any English or having had any positive experience with outsiders, the tribe considers their captives their enemy – and their dinner. One of the students is ritualistically killed by the village's elder / high priestess (Antonieta Pari) and then he is promptly dismembered, cooked and eaten. His friends watch in horror from behind the wooden bars where they are confined. What follows are more killings, more feasting and various attempts by the students to escape before the natives finish them off, whether for food, as punishment, or because of their brutal religious practices.

"The Green Inferno" is a wonderful family movie. (Still reading? Just checking.) Actually, the film is more restrained than I expected. There's much less nudity than in previous Eli Roth movies and the gore, as disturbing as it is, could have been a lot more graphic, given what's happening on screen. Most of what's shown is on par with typical slasher flicks. You might even say that this is a relatively… tasteful cannibal movie. The story's solid, the acting's fairly decent for this genre and the film works as a horror movie, a thriller, a political commentary and there's even some dark comedy. Some call this kind of movie "torture porn". I think that's a stretch, but the more graphic scenes make it difficult to simply call this movie "entertaining" without qualifying the term. I judge movies based on how entertaining they are and how well they each accomplish their individual goals. Based on those measures, I'd have to say that, much like that big, new roller coaster, this movie isn't for everyone, but many will find it bloody good. "B+"
41 out of 67 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
1/10
An ugly film inside and out - incompetently directed
kira02bit23 December 2015
Warning: Spoilers
A good friend with a love of horror films literally could not find one person to attend a screening of The Green Inferno with him, so I knuckled under and joined him. He owes me big time.

For those not in the know, The Green Inferno, Eli Roth's latest steaming pile of fecal matter, centers on a group of well-meaning college student, led by Ariel Levy, who venture into the Amazonian jungle to protest the destruction of the rain forest and its indigenous tribes by ruthless corporations. On the way back, their plane crashes into the jungle and they find themselves at the mercy of a terrifying tribe of cannibals. Oh, you can just cut the irony with a knife.

To say that I am not a fan of Eli Roth would be an understatement. One of the great tragedies of modern cinema is that filmmakers of true talent cannot seem to get funding for worthwhile projects, but somehow a hack like Roth manages to get a national release for dreck like this "film". This is Roth's homage to that long overlooked subgenre – the cannibal film – and grindhouse epics like Cannibal Holocaust. Given that 98% of filmgoers have no knowledge of these films or much knowledge of this subgenre and that no one has exactly been clamoring for its resurgence at the cinema, I am hard-pressed to figure out how Roth got any interest drummed up here, other than the most deprived of gore fanatics.

Forget things like story or sympathetic characters, Roth has no time for such foolishness. His energies are all reserved for how graphic and stomach-turning he can make his gore. This story pretty much unfolds like all his others. A group of young people exit their comfort zone in a foreign environment and pay the penalty. He seems to have some personal axe to grind against "armchair activists", but is completely clueless that the very act of these people traveling into the unknown to protest deforestation makes them anything BUT armchair activists. If the targets of the tribe's animosity were the corporate representatives behind the destruction, one could posit that this was some kind of vengeance tale against corporate greed, but such a theme seems beyond Roth and company. He seems to actively dislike anyone who takes a stand on an issue and wants them punished. His feelings are pretty much vocalized by the roommate of the leading lady, who chastises her for activism and preaches introversion and selfishness. Or at least it seems so – but it could also be the distractingly horrible performance by Sky Ferreira, who speaks as if joining us from another dimension where speaking is barely a hobby. Additionally, he seems to find all foreign people objects of suspicion or terror.

Not surprisingly, Roth cannot make us care about what happens to anyone in this cast. An actor's director he is not. The only face I recognized was Daryl Sabara (formerly of Spy Kids) as the stoner in the group. His big moment is flashing some full frontal nudity, while nearly having his privates attacked by a tarantula. He should fire his agent post-haste. Lorenza Izzo has the central role and given that she is the director's fiancée/wife, it is not surprisingly that her acting is lacking. The only other role of note is Levy as the leader of the group, but given that he plays the part from the start as a major sleaze, it is hard to fathom the heroine's attraction to him and it renders the "twist" of his motivations completely unsurprising.

For the duration of the running time, people are torn apart, have their eyes gouged out and eaten, are vivisected, etc., apparently all to Roth's glee. When you think it cannot get much worse, Roth actually introduces the potential of female genital mutilation for good measure, apparently proving there is just no gutter too low. He punctuates everything with unwelcome bursts of puerile humor, such as when a vegan realizes she is eating her friend or someone has explosive diarrhea. Oh the hilarity! Meanwhile, the film sports some of the ugliest cinematography in recent memory.

This is a film that is truly ugly inside and out. Roth seems to actually detest the people who populate his films, especially if they have good intentions. In fact, he may well detest people in general since he unleashes films like this godforsaken mess on them. It is incompetently directed and written – Roth has no notion of build-up or sustained suspense. He fails to grasp that there is a huge difference between scaring a viewer and repulsing them. Rumor has it he has been hired to helm the big budget version of the bestseller Meg, which is head-scratching since Roth fails to prove he can handle a big budget, actors, or even the very basics of storytelling. One can only assume that film will just feature two hours of Roth's camera focusing on chum and innards floating in the water because that is all he has demonstrated he is capable of.
57 out of 92 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
2/10
This can't be the movie Eli intended . . .
italbarenow26 September 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Opening Day. Waited 2 years. Pretty dazed and confused, and I just want to put on the record that there is a vibe in the flow of this film that gives the impression it's been sliced and diced up and put back together again for reasons that hopefully will leak out at some point. This seems like a movie torn from it's director's hands, and homogenized for American audiences.

Keep focusing on the fact that Eli Roth is not stupid, and during this 2 year waiting period and reading about the stages it went through, SOMETHING had to be causing the delays. This was intended as a homage, or re-imagining of Cannibal Holocaust, and seeing Mr. Roth's arc of history, he had a blueprint to go off on that it looks like at first he was going to do.

I am willing to bet there are HOURS of footage he shot that went unused, allusions to the original "Holocaust" gore, yet they are like writing full sentences as part of a paragraph, then all of a sudden, the sentence just "stops" - and if you know the source material - you know precisely why the action stops, and it's because it would have been a bridge too far for American audiences. There are several times, we get the foreshadowing (like someone taking a p*ss, not a spoiler) that is clearly a setup for something that happened in Cannibal Holocaust, yet you see the lead up . . . .the pitch . . . .and then there's no hit. It was clearly ripped out. Hollywood ruins everything with it's formulas. My hope was Eli would wield some power, and do what the French have been doing and break some ground in the horror / thriller genre. I don't like that I hated this experience tonight. I was pulling for it. If you were hoping for a new level, you still can only go to the French, with Haute Tension, Inside, Frontier(e)s, and Martyrs. They leave Hollywood in the dust.

Sure, it was aggravated by several cringe worthy moments of dialogue, but it was mostly tight. The lead actress was amazing and nearly carried the entire picture on her shoulders. The villain's arc completely unbelievable and cartoon-ish.

Greg Nicotero from the Walking Dead did the effects, and I was salivating for how much more he was going to get away with than he could on television, yet this was LESS than we see on a weekly basis with Walking Dead! Less gore than television? The Cannibals of Terminus arc was infinitely more visually horrifying than this. I didn't have to look away once. The laughter in the theater tonight didn't come at the right parts either. No one would be cracking jokes in these characters situations.

Say what you will about Hostel - it reinvented the genre a bit for American audiences, and caused the creation of the idiotic expression "torture porn" to roll off everyone's lips in an excuse to explain breaking new ground.

I've never heard of a completed film of this nature delayed for so long without explanation. I think the original vision is shut down, I think major moments were cut, and knowing the blueprint of Cannibal Holocaust, the ending is particularly infuriating because anyone with a film background knew where the ending was headed - yet in a series of strange edits that reek of "post post production tag ons", we seem setup for a damn sequel. Jammed into the middle of the credits, seriously? Half the audience was gone. That's the most disgusting torture of the night.
40 out of 64 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Empty Bloodbath
billygoat10715 October 2015
The Green Inferno is another one of Eli Roth's torture porn films, except this movie looks on cannibalism, which is meant to pay homage to one of the most controversial films of all time, Cannibal Holocaust. And the film decently establishes the lurid nature of this environment, but it takes too long to get to the creature feature, and when it does get there, the supposed shock value isn't compelling enough to become a satisfying torture porn. And the story then twists to something that is supposed to mean something, but it ends up feeling odd and underwhelming. It could have been just a straightforward exploitation film.

The movie has a pretty long opening exposition, concerning a young woman who was invited by a group of activists who wanted to save the Amazon rainforest by orchestrating a scandal to the loggers for online awareness. But this setup is so long, it has to be establish its own "world" even if it hardly has anything to do with the main plot, we're just walking around with these campy written characters that are often tough to care about since they are caricatures of a standard tree hugger or just another horror movie character cliché. To be fair, the movie's strange sense of humor does make these scenes entertaining, but in the end, these people are just not so engaging. We sometimes wanted some of them to get wacked off by a bunch cannibals already.

And when they get to the real threat of the story, it does deliver, maybe only works once. The first body count, well from these main antagonists specifically, is honestly pretty bizarre, by how effectively grounded this slaughter is depicted. I'm no expert for realistic violence, the amount of blood surely is ultimate, but you can really feel the horror within the images and tone of this scene. And the horror didn't stop at the aftermath by just keep showing how they feast this body until they feed leftovers to the animals and such. But everything else just went ridiculous. Sure, there are still more guts and blood all over the body counts, but they fall short of credibility of horror in cannibalism compared to the first kill. It's basically silly gore for the sake of earning more "shock."

The point is it's not that compelling. Complaining at the over-the-top moments can be missing the point of the director's flavor at his own work, but it kind of really does underwhelm the whole ingenuity of this horror. But even if we're just judging by the amount of blood in the entirety, it still doesn't feel that much. Again, one bizarre death scene doesn't hold up any satisfaction of bloodlust within the entire movie. Now the filmmaking, it's average enough for a B-horror film. Though, the camera showcases enough of the weirdness of this culture and the body parts they are decorating for their tribe or something. The acting is alright, with Lorenza Izzo competent enough as the protagonist who we could only legitimately inserted into. The rest are basically cookie cutters compared to this cookie cutter.

The Green Inferno can be worthy of glorious gorefest for one scene. One scene, only. And that scene serves the shock the movie is expecting, but for sick mind like mine, the movie kind of needs more of that. It's sad to watch, but it does create more genuine danger towards the people they are supposed to run away from. Everything else just kind of bogs down the suspense, letting the silliness take over until the movie itself becomes a joke. And I'm not against to its sense of humor, since they do work, while some are just meant to gross out, specifically when it involves something else than gore. Well, there's no denying how violent it still is, but it's also kind of forgettable. The characters are even more so, but who cares about them in a horror film? But if this film is expecting to have the same value or controversy as the movie this is inspired from, or at least marginally, then it could have done harder.
45 out of 73 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
7/10
Hungry
westsideschl29 February 2016
If you were hooked (pun, ha ha) on the SAW movies then this film will be a good after meal snack. Yes, it was way overboard meal preparation and surprisingly realistic body snacks (in most cheap slasher/slice/dice films the prosthetics look artificial). Filming and acting were better than expected and sold me. Part of the reason the acting was somewhat capturing was the reality of a tropical Peruvian forest and the gusto in which the novice tribal people took to their roles. End result is nobody (including the eco provocateurs, tribes peoples, deforesters) came away smelling like roses, in fact, I would not have been displeased if, in the end, they were all munched upon by the resident leopard, vanquisher of evil. A couple of picky points that lowered the rating. First, every tribal member (no matter the age) was totally painted in red clay like pigment - all the time; not realistic given the humid conditions and time they would have needed to apply said substance. Second, all the women (and young girls) wore tops to cover their breasts which as we all know about tropical tribes - that just doesn't happen. Third, why would the village attack the construction armed mercenaries in a clearing given their stealth in a forest. Fourth, a lot of gaps foremost was Samantha's escape then we hear nothing more. Supposedly we are suppose to pay attention to tattoos. Suggestion: Watch again, afterwards, with cast commentary as it's more interesting than the film.
11 out of 15 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
3/10
Why the fast forward button was invented.
Sleepin_Dragon17 January 2016
I should have known after being made to sit through Knock Knock what I was in for, Eli Roth is an interesting character, he seems to want to make films that are different and challenging, the trouble is he just seems to miss the mark wildly.

The Green Inferno starts off quite brightly, it's sunny, cheerful, with lots of upbeat music, it isn't long before carnage descends, a group of student activists protesting at the culling of the Rainforest meet the locals....

At times the acting is bad, it is like as if the cast are larking about and not taking it overly seriously. Some of the effects were shaky to say the least, and the makeup of a few people was a bit naff.

Classed as a horror film, I don't really get why, grim as opposed to scary.

Do something more exciting with your life, like a crossword or wash the dishes, a much better way to spend ninety minutes of your life.

I'll rate it 3 instead of 1 as some of the locations are breathtaking. Overall though it is a terrible film. 3/10
35 out of 58 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
6/10
Satisfying for fans of Eli Roth or the gore genre, but lacks any morality. It's only entertainment, people!
impalassamuel6 October 2016
Warning: Spoilers
It's human nature to admire that which terrifies us. I subjected myself to this gore-fest last night. Critics of Steinbeck's The Red Pony vent their disgust with both the book's content and the author. Similarly, with The Green Inferno, I could rant about the tastelessness of the content or how someone so demented could produce such filth, but I was drawn to this material and voluntarily consumed it.

The story was rather simple and the performances were less than stellar. But, like with porn, I presume that anyone wishing to view this particular title doesn't do so to experience Academy-level talent. With that in mind, I was quite impressed with the carnage and visual effects; lifelike, convincing and fairly creative. Roth once again manages to shatter the shocking meter. I was so compelled that after viewing it once through that I replayed a scene that was perhaps the most disturbing part of the movie because I knew I'd probably never sit through the entirety of this one ever again.

If you're expecting gratuitous sex and nudity you'll be disappointed. I was surprised that with the number of young, attractive females we didn't see much skin, unlike Hostel or Cabin Fever.

Regarding the plot, I was disappointed with the survivor's defense of of her captors. I couldn't believe that she was willing to describe them with such dignity just to protect a few trees. Dumb!

Overall, I saw exactly what I expected to see which is the only reason I rented it. I'm looking forward to sitting through a single viewing of Roth's next craftily unpleasant picture because they all are worth seeing only once. Soak it all in the first time and enjoy!
5 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
1/10
Remarkably lame
peedur2 October 2015
I'd hoped for something - maybe a more clearly horrifying, less trashy-exploitative reinterpretation of the 70's Italian shocker that Mr. Roth was faithfully emulating. There WAS something unnerving (and elusive) to "Cannibal Holocaust,"as grubby and amateur an effort that it was. Sadly however, "The Green Inferno" misses whatever that quality was by such a huge margin, one wonders what on earth the filmmaker was thinking. Did he even understand what made that earlier film work?

Cardboard characters with cliché feelings, motivations so caricatured they border on contempt for the audience. We don't care that these characters may perish. Neither the story nor the filmmakers take them very seriously beyond their value as flesh, a miscalculation on several levels.

The internet has conditioned or calloused us to footage of dismemberment, beheading and viscera. This subject was taboo and terrifying in the 70's when one could only see it on the rare videotape - the secretive quality made it so much more forbidden. Today, we actually need more context to be horrified.

The primitive natives could have played a wonderful contrast to the American/European characters, but they were treated with even less interest beyond their basic caricature. A simple look at "Apocalypto" might have given Mr. Roth some pointers about how an alien culture can be horrifying with violence. But there is nothing that lofty here. What the natives do is given the aura of "yikes" rather than dread or horror.

"What is it that makes cannibalism horrifying?" is a question which isn't even asked in this film. The filmmaker takes it for granted that it IS horrifying and leaves it there. There is no exploration beyond the visual; what we do get in terms of exploration feels tame since there is no awareness of why it even needs to be understood.

Horror is not an easy genre to master, we are skeptical about the nature of manipulation. We are more aware than ever about psychology, media, character motivations and what makes stories compelling; it's the reason why TV and film has rapidly become so much more sophisticated. Death requires more context to induce terror - horror movies cannot take anything for granted. Mr Roth's successful efforts concentrate on the issues of sadism/torture and/or the fear of pain. This one takes the subject of cannibalism and doesn't explore it beyond it's basic mechanism.

This is a sad, bland film which is sadder given how much the intent was to be shocking and ghastly. It achieves neither.
17 out of 26 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
7/10
Roth does cannibalism; Italian style!
Coventry25 March 2016
The films of Eli Roth are an acquired taste, or at least for me personally they were. It's not because Quentin Tarantino proclaims that Roth is the future of the horror genre, simply based on having seen "Cabin Fever" that the rest of us genre fanatics obediently have to agree. It took me two viewings before I could remotely appreciate "Cabin Fever" and both "Hostel" movies are quite heavily flawed as well. But there's one thing you really can't deny and that is that Eli Roth is an avid and obsessive lover of the genre and that clearly shows in every film he delivers. "The Green Inferno" is a giant homage – love letter, even – to the temporarily popular trend of Italian cannibal movies from the late 70s & early 80s. This very secluded horror niche contains relatively few titles, but each and every single one is a notorious and bona fide cult classic. The most infamous and influential one is, of course, Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust", but there are several more beauties out there and Eli Roth refers to all of them here, like "Deep River Savages", "Cannibal Ferox", "Mountain of the Cannibal God", "Jungle Holocaust" and "Cannibal Apocalypse". In case "The Green Inferno" triggered your appetite – so to speak – make sure that you track down all these controversial but hugely fascinating films.

The beautiful and ambitious freshman student Justine joins an environmentalist activist group led by the charismatic Alejandro, as they are about to travel to Peru in order to protest against the deforestation of the Amazonian rain forest. After a successful, but for Justine very traumatizing confrontation with the deconstruction workers and their bulldozers, the group's ramshackle old plane crashes down in the jungle. Many of the group members die instantly in the crash or in freaky accidents, but the fate of the survivors is even worse as they are promptly surrounded by a tribe of red-colored cannibals. During their captivity in a cage, fear and desperation takes the upper hand while some of the group members – most notably Alejandro – show their true cowardly and repulsive nature. Jungle and cannibal exploitation movies are associated with extreme gore, shockingly explicit ritual killings and copious amounts of bloodshed. Eli Roth certainly doesn't cut back on grotesque violence, as I hoped and expected, but he was wise enough not to include or refer to any real animal killing sequences which made "Cannibal Holocaust" so controversial. "The Green Inferno" evidently isn't suitable for viewers with weak stomachs or sensitive nerves, as several characters are torn to pieces, impaled, beheaded or eaten alive. Although nicely disguised and face-painted (particularly the headhunter and the Elder lady) the extras playing the cannibal tribe members don't come across as too menacing or bloodthirsty, at least not in comparison to the old Italian movies. In a movie handling about primitive tribes and straightforward massacres, you obviously can't expect too much underlying tension or intelligent plot twists, but Roth and his co-writer Guillermo Amoedo nevertheless tried their hardest to provide the characters with some depth and the script with some political insights. Another thing they do rather well is bring variety and surprise in the order the group members are picked off. Some of the characters' deaths come unexpected and quicker/later than I thought. Unfortunately, however, it does remain an Eli Roth film and he continues to make annoying mistakes over and over again… I'm referring to an overlong first half hour in which practically nothing happens except for a lot of blah blah (although it's not as bad as in "Hostel"), the use of infantile toilet humor (the tarantula sequence or the ridiculous diarrhea moment) and downright idiotic stuff (like getting an entire cannibal tribe stoned by hiding a little bag of weed in a corpse about to be cooked). But hey, although flawed and badly acted most of the time, it's definitely my favorite Eli Roth film! Oh, and apparently Mr. Roth is also married to the incredibly cute (and 17 years younger than him) lead actress Lorena Izzo. Way to go, Eli!
15 out of 24 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
1/10
stupid
jasonnavarone10 January 2016
Warning: Spoilers
how low have the American populace become to think that we are as stupid as the characters in this film? The entire film is just an exercise in hoping the mains get killed because they are so stupid and idealistic.. and the end is even more disappointing. I found myself actually cheering the savages when the were eating the idiots... Thank you for making this world worse by promoting this crap.

I am not sure how to explain how much this movie offended me and my sense of common sense. The idiot who was to scared of snakes to urinate or his efforts to avoid the flesh eating disease that was infecting the gun he was given to ward off snakes. Or the idiot who ran his face into the still spinning aircraft propellor. These were a bunch of starry eyed college idiots trying to change the world with cell phones rather then something real.

I hope the average American is not as stupid as what is portrayed in this film.

This movie is stupid...
19 out of 31 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
8/10
Not as bad as everyone says....
RUaMovieFreak216 November 2018
As a huge movie fan of all genres, I have to say well done to Eli Roth and the cast of The Green Inferno. The one thing about his movies.... you either love them or hate them. As for myself, I see what his vision is in his work and I enjoy his movies very much. The movie had a good story (great setup at the beginning for the near end) that had all the great gory cringing blood and violence you would expect it to have, and a great surprise twist at the end. I'm not sure the people that gave this movie a low rating really watched it. Definitely worth watching in my opinion.
22 out of 35 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
7/10
Intense, effective, yet I still can't recommend it to everyone
Amthermandes30 September 2015
The Green Inferno is well done, and highly effective at creating tension and instilling fear in the viewers. Even though there are parts that look and feel fake, even cheesy.

I'm assuming most of you reading this is familiar with Eli Roth, or at least the violent nature of his films. Yes, this one is violent. You want carnage, you want gore, it's got it. You cannot see this if you have a weak stomach, I'm telling you straight. It's not loaded with it, but a few scenes are very over-the-top and a few are even terribly realistic. I'm used to this sort of material and still I had to look away during two scenes first time I watched it.

With that out of the way, let's hit some other elements. The acting teeter-totters, some times it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I'm talking about the actual actors, the fact that the villagers are all authentic tribesmen and women, is one of the really cool things about this film. At times it almost feels like a documentary. The plot, basic. And from the start, you get an idea of what Eli Roth thinks about protesters and college students and their tendency to jump aboard the "causes-ship" to support their entitlement. This film is a message, but it's also a way to vicariously blow out some steam.

Movie's a bit predictable, camera's too shaky, and there are times I felt like Eli Roth was trying too hard to stir up audiences' anger towards his characters, but all in all it's a well done movie and CAN be enjoyable, if you can stomach it and if you understand that it's just a movie. I personally felt it was too weak and where it wasn't, it was too strong. There wasn't really an in-between.

If anybody is planning on seeing this, and are not used to extreme graphic content, I suggest skipping this one.

EDIT: I actually ended up showing this movie to a friend of mine, and I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it a bit more than I did previously. I gave it two more stars. It's still as brutal as I remember, but I gotta admit, it was very well done, and the actors did a fantastic job. Really decent throwback to the cannibal exploitation genre.
28 out of 50 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
1/10
This movie is a ZERO!!!
teebear81722 July 2022
A bunch of kids crash a plane in the jungle and this vicious tribe murder them and eat them one by one by one.... it is vicious, is graphic it is disgusting with no redeemable virtue whatsoever this is a disgusting disgraceful movie.
5 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
An error has occured. Please try again.

See also

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews


Recently Viewed