College freshman Justine (Lorenza Izzo), daughter of a United Nations attorney, joins a campus activism group led by the charismatic and intense Alejandro (Ariel Levy). Alejandro plans a journey deep into the Amazon rainforest, where he and his group seek to bring international attention to a corporation's illegal deforestation efforts and pillaging of natural gas that will also wipe out a local tribe of indigenous people. Justine and Alejandro's followers travel to the Amazon and make their stand against the corporation's clear-cutters and armed mercenaries, using their cell phones to broadcast the incident to the world, but as they make their way home via a small prop plane, things go awry, resulting in a crash that kills several of the activists. Justine, Alejandro, and the remaining activists manage to crawl from the wreckage, but they are immediately captured by the indigenous tribesmen, who think they are members of the faction that is destroying their habitat. The tribe are skilled hunters who have co-existed with the dangers of the jungle since time immemorial, while Justine and the crash survivors are pampered westerners with no clue of exactly where they are, no way to communicate with their captors, and no hope of escape, as they are guarded 24/7 by tribesmen with sedative blow darts. Unfortunately for Justine and the survivors, the tribe are also cannibal headhunters, and Justine and crew make for a bountiful feast...
Basically a love letter to the Italian cannibal sub-genre — one of the sleaziest, grubbiest, most negative and exploitative corners of horror cinema — Eli Roth's THE GREEN INFERNO is perhaps the first iteration of the form to be realized with actual craft and not just an exploitative desire to slather the screen with plotless gore and sadism. I've seen several entries in this singularly unsavory category, and this is far and away the most competent and professional-looking of the dubious breed, unlike the garden variety Italo gut-munchers that look and feel like a snuff film. Roth has crafted a harrowing survival narrative that allows us to get to know the characters to a decent degree before the mayhem starts, and once the gruesome ball gets rolling, it's a bleak and nasty affair for the hapless prisoners. Live dismemberment, dysentery-fueled diarrhea within a confined space, torture with hungry ants, inspection of the female prisoner's hymens with a sharp probe, and even the threat of female genital mutilation are all on the table, and Roth manages to bring us all of that within the constraints of an R-rating and done more tastefully than one might expect.
Yes, it's bloody and unabashedly gory as hell, but it's all presented in a matter-of-fact manner, as if it's all just another day in the existence of the cannibal tribe (which it is, but only with a sudden windfall of fresh meat).
To say more would ruin the surprises, so if you have the stomach for this sort of thing, I heartily recommend that you check it out. Unlike the Italian sleaze-fests that it drew inspiration from, THE GREEN INFERNO is actually a very good film, albeit a particularly nasty one. I don't think it's anything that someone who watched the more excessive episodes of GAME OF THRONES couldn't handle, but I get it if you opt to steer clear. Cannibalism is ugly business and there are few ways to depict such without going there, but those who brave this film are likely of stern enough stuff to be able to handle its charnel house shocks, and if they do they may just be surprised at how much they enjoy the proceedings. Like I said, I am no stranger to gory cannibal films, but I cannot say that I actually enjoyed any of the classic examples thereof. I appreciate them for their audacity and merry willingness to be as nauseating as possible, but I do not find them to be fun cinematic entertainment. THE GREEN INFERNO, I am glad to say, is the first such film that I have genuinely enjoyed, so make of that what you will.
Oh, and stick around once the end credits roll...
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