FrightFest Film Review: The Green Inferno (Eli Roth, 2013) ★★★

Kicking starting off the 2014 Film4 FrightFest was The Green Inferno. Borrowing it's DNA almost entirely from Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980), the film follows a group of student activists from New York who venture in to the Amazon to save a village of natives. However, once fulfilling their good deed, their returning flight crashes in to the vast green landscape and they are captured by the very natives they are trying to protect - victims of a cannibalistic tribe.

**This review contains analysis of plot points**
When it comes to Eli Roth, horror fans tend to have a marmite difference in opinion. On one hand, they feel his uncut, full frontal approach is a breathe of fresh air within a genre done-to-death with the same repeated conventions; whilst others feel his torture porn is simply guts and gore for the sake of it. During the Bush Administration, extreme torture films such as Saw (James Wan, 2004) and Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005) were political statements of mindless violence against the Iraq War and if there's one thing we can always see from horror, it is always about social and political context, particularly in Roth films.

So then, in true Roth style, The Green Inferno presents attitudes (particularly negative ones) towards our society's relationships with technology and social media. The group enter the jungle with no weapons and instead are told that their "phones are their guns" as no one will kill them if they are streaming the  protest live to the world. At first this seems to work in their favour but when their plane crashes on the way home, their phones are redundant, unable to get a signal or save them. They soon learn that their presence in the Amazon was all a publicity stunt waged by the head of the group and not only have they not prevented the construction that threatens to kill the cannibal tribe they were once trying to save, but no one is looking for them. As the group's technology fails them and leaves them in the abyss, this is Roth's statement against how heavily we rely on our phones and computers to communicate, to socialise, to be happy. Somewhat ironic when Roth took quickly to twitter when the film was pulled from distribution just weeks before it's actual release date.

Typically of Roth also, The Green Inferno follows your standard horror codes which make it easy viewing. As a true lover of horror with a clear understanding of the genre, Roth almost pays homage to horror classics with the conventional horror building blocks. However, it can be said in this instance that this can make the narrative somewhat predictable perhaps so not to distract from the deeper context of the film. Here, we have the 'virgin' figure in the form of Justine (Lorenza Izzo), a hesitant yet willing newbie eager to prove herself. In obvious fashion, she strives to survive as the other members of her group are wiped out one by one and she emerges the last girl standing, a stronger empowered figure at the end of the film. No awards here for original screenplay but the journey along the way is still somewhat enjoyable. Interestingly, gender roles and explored quite heavily throughout the narrative, even touching on the subject of female circumcision or genital cutting - an interesting topic that Roth obviously feels strongly about but approaches in a level-headed manor. Furthermore, Roth explores the effects of deforestation and the extinction of native tribes as a result of the destruction of the rainforest as a further attempt to add yet more depth and meaning to the otherwise conventional horror.

For an Eli Roth production, The Green Inferno doesn't seem to feature as much horrific gore as expected and in someways this was a little disappointing. When you go to see films such as this, made by directors such as this, there's a certain level of understanding that it is going to be hard to watch due to the intense, copious amounts of blood and gore, especially when the film is about cannibalistic tribes. Of course, it was by no means tame and perhaps as viewers we have become more desensitized to violence on screen, but it seemed a little lacking in comparison to previous Roth classics such as Hostel: Part II (2007) and Cabin Fever (2002). Who knows, maybe this was a response to all the haters who claim his films lack substance and are more carnage over quality.

Whilst the film had underlying tones of depth, and with so much going on, it appeared as though something was missing. It was unclear as to whether the B-movie undertones were purposeful in replicating and paying homage to the original Cannibal Holocaust (it's original title being The Green Inferno) or if it was just a tad sappy. Overall, whilst The Green Inferno is nothing original, and relies heavily on basic horror genre conventions, it is a well directed and reasonably well executed horror with a message to the people. I feel privileged to have seen before it was pulled from distribution. The Green Inferno gets a Sophie star rating of 3 out of 5 stars.

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