Movie Reviews

Now that we’ve all been beaten to death with vampire and werewolf flicks and slasher movies, it was about time someone tried something different. Enter Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever). Paying homage to Ruggero Deodato’s “Cannibal Holocaust”, Roth follows a bunch of young activists deep into the Amazon jungle where they run into a not so pleasant encounter with the natives.

Green Inferno revolves around Justine (Lorenza Izzo), a college freshman who becomes hell-bent on saving the world after attending a lecture about female genital mutilation. Just a couple of days after discovering her new goal in life, she finds herself on the way to Peru along with a group of likeminded people led by Alejandro (Ariel Levy), who she also happens to have a crush on. They set out to stop deforestation by chaining themselves to trees and streaming the whole thing via the internet (they must have a better cell phone program than I have). They succeed in their mission, but on the way back their plane crashes. That right there would already ruin everyone’s day, but things get decidedly worse when they end up being captured by cannibals who see them as a 9.99$ all-you-can-eat buffet.

Roth did a great job of stretching the relatively small budget to its limits, even managing to include a convincing plane crash scene. The acting on the other hand is pretty bad. That’s okay though, because besides the fact that the characters are an annoying and misinformed bunch of hipsters, the bad acting makes you look forward even more to the moment where they are being torn to shreds.

Once the limbs start flying and eyes are being gauged, Green Inferno turns into a sick and twisted rollercoaster ride. Some scenes might be hard to sit through, but then again… isn’t that exactly why we watch movies like this?