Just so there’s no misunderstanding as to which side of the fence I stand, I’m one of those who has never understood why Eli Roth is held up as a modern master of horror. Okay, so he’s a good looking and charismatic man, who comes off as genuinely knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the genre; I’ve been pleasantly surprised how much I’ve enjoyed some of his interviews on several recent Arrow Video releases, for instance. So as an ambassador of sorts, I can see his value. But if we sweep all that to one side and put the focus where it should be – on his work as a filmmaker – then I really struggle to see what the fuss is about. Cabin Fever was at best a passing amusement, Hostel was mean-spirited and tedious, and both films suffered from significant problems of tone, pace and structure (I never bothered seeing Hostel Part 2). Certainly it’s fair to call him a pioneer of the ordeal movie wave which took over the genre from the mid-2000s, but to my mind that’s nothing to be too proud about.
You can understand, then, that I didn’t have any particularly strong interest or expectations about The Green Inferno, his first directorial effort in over five years. The fact that I’ve never cared for the jungle cannibal genre either probably didn’t help. All this being the case, you might question whether I’m the right person to review this movie now – but this is just how it is. If you’re after an assessment from a professed admirer of both Roth and cannibal movies, may I refer you to Karolina’s review from FrightFest 2014. Otherwise, read on.
Boiled down, The Green Inferno sees Roth essentially retell the same story he’s already told in his earlier films: bunch of affluent, smug, largely unlikeable young metropolitan Americans venture into unfamiliar territory, and meet horrible deaths. Accusations of racism have been made against the director for this reason, but it strikes me that Roth is less interested in demonising foreigners than he is in punishing Americans. Whereas the protagonists in Cabin Fever and Hostel were ostensibly punished for the traditional horror movie reasons – being young, horny and drunk – The Green Inferno attempts to give things a more political spin by offering up a group of environmental activists. There are the beginnings of something potentially interesting here, as our clearly signposted final girl Justine (Lorenza Izzo, who I’ve learned since viewing is now Roth’s wife) is lured into a socially conscious college group partially out of genuine desire to help, but also due to her attraction to uber-confident group leader Alejandro (Ariel Levy). Having successfully campaigned for college cleaners to get health insurance, these kids think they can change the world, so they embark on what immediately sounds like a bonkers mission to head out to the peripheries of the Amazon rainforest and block a construction crew from tearing into the lands of hitherto unseen indigenous tribes. However, it’s clear from the get-go that the bulk of these kids have no idea what they’re doing, and that the real motives behind their mission might not be all the seem.
Plot wise, then, things are intriguing enough for the first act, even if it suffers from Roth’s usual deluge of largely unlikeable characters spouting dialogue that never rings true. But then almost all of that goes out the window as soon as they get captured by the jungle tribe, who waste little time revealing their appetite for red meat. However, what that essentially leaves us with for the bulk of the movie is an open air variation on the standard torture porn set-up: bunch of people held against their will facing horrible deaths, trying to keep it together enough to figure out a way to escape. We’ve seen much the same in any number of Saw movies, the only difference being these guys are in a bamboo cage instead of a dingy cellar. Like so many films before to follow this format, The Green Inferno struggles to remain interesting once it reaches this point – and in trying to keep our attention, Roth stumbles right back into those same tone issues which soured his earlier films with some very badly misjudged sidesteps into scatalogical humour, and one frankly ludicrous plot device which seems to have been lifted directly from the CG animated movie Monster House; subdue the big bad by medicinal means. Had the film not been played so straight beforehand, some of this might have worked. As it stands, these scenes just come off as stupid.
Things look up ever so slightly once the inevitable jailbreak occurs and we briefly venture into jungle adventure territory, but this too turns out to be merely a temporary sidestep, and the little we get isn’t exactly on a par with Apocalypto. I’ll say this much, though; after the clusterfucks that were the final acts of Cabin Fever and Hostel (again, can’t pass comment on Hostel 2 as I haven’t seen it), Roth does seem to be getting a better idea of how to bring his stories to a satisfactory end – although the climactic attempt to set up a sequel seems pretty misguided (and given the legal issues that kept the film from being released for so long, I suspect a Green Inferno franchise isn’t too likely).
It might have been intended to take the modern horror audience to hitherto unexplored territory, but The Green Inferno is ultimately the same old shit dressed up a bit differently. It fails to develop characters worth giving a damn about, doesn’t adequately explore either its critique of contemporary activism or its jungle tribe, and it doesn’t even get too gross with the cannibalism. I went in unconvinced of Roth’s widely accepted horror master status, and came out feeling no different. That said, I can’t deny I’m curious to see how the director fares on his next movie Meg, a giant shark movie based on the Steve Alten novel. As a bigger budget studio production (and, happily, not something he’s written himself), this will surely force Roth to flex some different creative muscles – and who knows, maybe we’ll find that’s a level he’s better suited to. He’s done the comparatively small scale horror movie thing enough times now, and it doesn’t seem to me that he’s making much progress within it.
The Green Inferno is out now in select UK cinemas and on VOD, and will come to DVD and Blu-ray on 22nd February, from Entertainment One.