The Green Inferno

Director: Eli Roth
Screenplay: Eli Roth & Guillermo Amoedo (story by Eli Roth)
Stars: Lorenza Izzo (Justine), Ariel Levy (Alejandro), Daryl Sabara (Lars), Kirby Bliss Blanton (Amy), Magda Apanowicz (Samantha), Sky Ferreira (Kaycee), Nicolás Martínez (Daniel), Aaron Burns (Jonah), Ignacia Allamand (Kara), Ramón Llao (The Bald Headhunter), Richard Burgi (Charles), Matías López (Carlos), Antonieta Pari (The Village Elder), Tatiana Panaifo (Village Girl)
MPAA Rating: R
Year of Release: 2015
Country: U.S. / Chile
The Green Inferno Blu-ray + Digital HD
The Green InfernoThe Green Inferno is Eli Roth’s fourth feature, and like his previous films it is a grisly cautionary tale about the dangers inherent in young, attractive, privileged Americans wandering out of their comfort zones. Having already employed rural rednecks in Cabin Fever (2002) and Third World chaos in Hostel (2005) and Hostel Part II (2007) to punish their combination of arrogance and naiveté, Roth has now turned his attention to South America and the indigenous tribes living deep in the Amazonian rain forest. But wait—not so fast. Roth is too clever to make a simple reactionary horror film, and while some of The Green Inferno’s ghastliest moments come courtesy of the jungle cannibals, they are not the only—or even necessarily the worst—of the movie’s boogeymen.

The protagonist is a Columbia University freshman named Justine (Lorenza Izzo), who ignores the cynicism of her sneering roommate and joins the Activist Change Team (ACT), a group of student agitators who, having already won health insurance for the university’s janitorial staff by staging a hunger strike on the main lawn, are now setting their sights on a much more ambitious goal: stopping a large corporation from clearing rainforest in Peru and killing the natives living there in order to mine natural gas. Justine, the daughter of a United Nations bigwig who sports an Obama-blue tie, is the very face of white privilege, and unlike the horny cads of Hostel, she wants to travel to the Third World not to exploit it for her own carnal ends, but to make some kind of a difference. She’s a true innocent, even though it is suggested that she is at least partially motivated by the rugged good looks and charisma of the group’s determined leader, Alejandro (Ariel Levy). If there is any depth to The Green Inferno—and I think there is—it lies precisely in that gray zone between Justine’s genuine desire to be an agent of change and her just-as-genuine desire to look like one.

Soon Justine is on a plane headed south with a bunch of other college students, including the opportunistic Lars (Daryl Sabara), the unstable Amy (Kirby Bliss Blanton), and Jonah (Aaron Burns), a hulk with a sweet smile who clearly has a crush on her. They successfully chain themselves to trees and bulldozers and broadcast the protest over the Internet, but any victory they have is short-lived as they soon fall into the hands of the very tribe they are trying to protect. Unfortunately, because they are dressed in the same neon-yellow jumpsuits as the construction workers who are poised to destroy their homes and kill them, the tribespeople see the activists as enemies and treat them accordingly, which results in all manner of, as the MPAA ratings board officially labeled it, “aberrant violence and torture,” resulting in more than a few “grisly disturbing images.” Eyes are gouged, a tongue cut out, arms and legs dismembered—and that’s just the first victim.

The Green Inferno was produced and set for release back in 2013, only a few years after the Occupy movement had dominated the news media, but it wound up sitting on a shelf due to various financial issues. However, its social-political subtext still has plenty of bite, especially in the wake of recent campus protests and unrest. In fact, if one were so inclined, one could easily see the whole film as a ghastly parody of the perils of facile political activism, with the jungle and the cannibals who live there standing in for the ugly realities of the world that young, naïve agitators want to grossly simplify to force-fit into their own worldview. The Green Inferno is nothing if not cynical about human nature, although it does allow at the end for some level of human decency to emerge from all the carnage, both physical and political.

Roth is a canny horror producer, as his films always tread a fine line between the thoughtful and the simply depraved. Like his fellow cinematic raconteur Quentin Tarantino (who “presented” Hostel and gave him a plum role in Inglourious Basterds), Roth is enamored of exploitation films, particularly those that came out of Europe in the 1960s and ’70s, and The Green Inferno is such a loving homage to Italian cannibal films that the final credits include a brief history of the subgenre and the film is dedicated to Ruggero Deodato, the director of 1980’s notorious Cannibal Holocaust (the title The Green Inferno is actually taken from the film-within-the-film in Cannibal Holocaust). However, unlike its many low-budget progenitors, which excused their meager resources with purposefully rough documentary-like aesthetics, The Green Inferno looks very good. The cinematography by Antonio Quercia (who also shot Roth’s following feature, Knock Knock) is frequently sumptuous in the way it conveys the verdant beauty and danger of the jungle. Long shots of muddy rivers, towering mountains, and endless expanses of emerald-green vegetation turn the environment into its own character, both captivating and terrifying. Roth is not as exacting a director as Tarantino, but he’s no hack either, and he clearly understands that the environment itself is crucial to the film’s effectiveness.

Of course, what most people will be talking about is the film’s violence (designed by veteran make-up effects maestros Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger), which turns out to be all that one could expect from a film consciously modeled on Italian cannibal gut-crunchers. It is right in line with Roth’s previous films, which are perfectly encapsulated by Mikita Brottman’s self-explanatory label “cinema vomitif.” Roth is a cinematic sadist who loves putting his beautiful cast through the proverbial ringer, although he sometimes leavens the violence with bits of humor that remind us not to take it too seriously (at one point all the cannibals are high from eating an activist stuffed with a particularly powerful strain of marijuana, and they turn on a new victim who screams, “Oh no! They’ve got the munchies!”). Despite the sporadic humor, the punishment meted out to the activists feels particularl brutal since they are suffering for little more than being politically naïve (unlike the morally deranged documentarians in Cannibal Holocaust).

Well, that’s not exactly true. While Roth gets plenty of mileage out of emphasizing the “otherness” of the tribespeople with their red-painted bodies, pierced noses and mouths, and cannibalistic rituals, Alejandro is arguably the film’s true villain. There is a third act revelation that Alejandro’s cause is not exactly what he has made it out to be, but even before then he has been depicted as an insatiable agitator who is always willing to sacrifice others for his cause, even as he makes sure that he stays above the fray and maintains control. The cannibals may be the ones who dismember and eat the activists, but it is Alejandro who serves them up.

The Green Inferno Blu-ray + Digital HD

Aspect Ratio2.35:1
AudioEnglish DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround
SubtitlesEnglish, Spanish, French
Supplements
  • Audio commentary by co-writer/director Eli Roth, producer Nicolás López, and stars Lorenza Izzo, Aaron Burns, Kirby Bliss Blanton, and Daryl Sabara
  • Photo gallery
  • DistributorUniversal Studios Home Entertainment
    SRP$29.98
    Release DateJanuary 5, 2016

    VIDEO & AUDIO
    The image on the Blu-ray of The Green Inferno is a direct digital port, as the film was shot digitally on the Canon C300 (according to the commentary, it was the first feature to be shot with that camera). The image quality is excellent throughout. The image is sharp, clear, and very well detailed (perhaps a bit too detailed once limbs start getting hacked off and intestines pulled out). The shots that look the best are of the Peruvian rain forest, whose intense verdant greens become the film’s dominant color. Most of the film takes place in bright daylight, which gives it an overall bright look. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1-channel soundtrack is also very good, with nice, effective use of the surround channels to immerse us in the atmospheric sounds of the rainforest. The orchestral score by Manuel Riveiro, which is key to the film’s effectiveness, sounds lush and full, while the screams of various victims have just the right piercing quality.

    SUPPLEMENTS
    The only supplements are a photo gallery of more than 230 production stills and behind-the-scenes photographs and an audio commentary that was recorded during the film’s belated theatrical release, which means that the contributors were gathering together several years after the film was shot. The participants include co-writer/director Eli Roth, producer Nicolás López, and stars Lorenza Izzo, Aaron Burns, Kirby Bliss Blanton, and Daryl Sabara, all of whom were recorded together and sound like they had a good time doing so. At times this results in one of those commentaries where everyone is talking over each other and handing out compliments to themselves and others, but overall the commentary is entertaining and informative (sometimes a little too informative, as Sabara is only too proud to inform us that that’s his member we see on screen).

    Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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    All images copyright © Universal Studios Home Entertainment



    Overall Rating: (3)




    James Kendrick

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