I can’t even begin to tell you how much I geeked out over this movie. Hell, I still am geeking out over it. I saw the movie on Thursday, and certain scenes are still playing in my head.
It had been a little over two years since I first read about the film and started getting more and more excited about the Eli Roth project as the release date got closer.. The movie was supposed to come out around this time last year, but it ran into a few problems, including losing its distributor. That’s no surprise there, as a movie like this could really hurt the reputation of a company. But it could also help one as well. Thank you to Universal Pictures, Blumhouse, and High Top Releasing for finally getting this movie to the fans of Roth’s movies.
The first trailers that came out for the film were either trailers so short because there was so little they could show, pitch black with audio over it, or they were audience reaction videos. The Red Band trailer came out about a week before the film was released and showed a little teaser to the first, and most disturbing, kill in the film. It was hard to watch the Red Band trailer, but the real scene and the rest of the movie made that clip look like a Disney film.
After the movie ended, I came out of the theater wishing there was just a little more. I’ve seen almost all of Roth’s films, the first two Hostel films and Aftershock stand out the most, and I feel like he could’ve done even more. That being said, what Roth did was more than enough. The film included extremely intense, hard-to-stomach scenes of death, rituals, and torture. Not only do I not include spoilers in these reviews, but I wouldn’t want to ruin any of the scenes in the movie.
The film follows Roth’s typical formula: An almost equal dose of horror and comedy. It might be hard to believe, but The Green Inferno is really funny. The little redhead from the Spy Kids movies, Daryl Sabara, is all grown up and plays a goofy stoner in the film. A scene with explosive diarrhea also gives the audience a good laugh, which is just what they need. If Roth’s films were straight horror, nobody would be able to watch them. Again, don’t get me wrong, The Green Inferno is far from a comedy. Although I think I just came up with a new genre for this film: NomCom. Get it?
In case you don’t know what the film is about, it follows a group of NYU hipsters who head to the Amazon to save a tribe from being bulldozed over to put up new developments. The film follows Justine, played by Roth’s wife Lorenza Izzo, as she gets sucked into the group and brought to the jungle. Among their adventures, one of their plane crashes and the survivors are quickly captured by a cannabalistic tribe; the same one they were trying to save. Of course.
Roth made this movie right after Aftershock, a film that follows a group of partiers in Chile, who after an earthquake, is terrorized by the psychopathic killers that escaped from the now destroyed jail. Now that I think about it, this film and The Green Inferno are quite similar. Whoever dies in the earthquake or airplane are the lucky ones. Weird to think about, but that’s the brilliance of Roth. Anyway, Roth used some of the same cast for both movies, including his wife. The cast loved working with Roth so much and recognized his talent, so they were totally onboard for his ode to Cannibal Holocaust. In fact, they were more than on board, because the film was shot on location, where the cast was waking up with bugs in their bodies and Izzo almost drowned during the filming of one of the scenes. To go even further, most of the cast of the film is a tribe that has not only never been on camera before, but one that has never seen an outside civilization before. I know.
Roth showed the tribe Cannibal Holocaust, which was the influence to his film and the first movie this tribe ever saw. Holocaust is an 80s film that is deemed the most graphic film in the world. It is also the most banned movie across the globe. The film follows a professor who goes to the Amazon to find out what happened to three missing explorers who went down there to study the culture of one of the tribes. Most of the movie you see is the video that the professor found, which really makes this the first found footage ever made. The kills in the film are so intense, that for the time the film was made, most people thought the kills were real. The tribe in the film is known as the Green Inferno, and that’s where Roth got the name for his 2015 film.
I was lucky enough to find friends to see it with me. I’ve had a few friends ask me about it since I saw it, and although I’m writing this review now, all I can say is go see it. Don’t wait for it to come to RedBox. Don’t wait to watch it after you’ve heard all about the film. Go with a group of friends and watch them squirm. They’ll enjoy watching you squirm as well.
