The Green Inferno – Review

After a year long delay, the Green Inferno finally got its theatrical release and with all honesty, it wasn’t really worth the wait. The man behind the camera, Eli Roth, considered the Chilean- American horror film a tribute to Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust  and took inspiration from Italian gore films as seen in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

The Green Inferno  follows the protagonist, Justine, a frosh in college who eagerly joins a student activist group that plans to save the Amazon rainforest and protect a fictional tribe known as the Yagé People from being driven out of their land. It was a successful project, but unfortunately for them their victory celebration is short-lived, as their Cessna plane crashes in the middle of a  jungle where another tribe dwells nearby.

Here’s the thing. The film spends way too much time explaining its points rather than actually giving a show. Very sluggish to start, acting and dialogue suck, less impact than it should because of unnecessary dumbness, and the story was more ludicrous as to be amusing than it was thrilling or terrifying. Sure that the gore part was actually gory but didn’t quite work as a horror movie.

When it comes to the plot, there are some twists and turns and enough character conflict going on to keep you immersed but it gets easy to peg down in the second half of the movie where it finally unleashes hell on the victims after almost an hour.  There’s a lot of unnecessary stupidity midway and the character deaths feel like the movie is playing it safe with the common stereotype in every horror film where there’s a group of people who decides to do something stupid and mess up, regrets and blame each and everyone. Then, their characters: the virgin, the nice guy, the stoner-air headed dude, the scaredy-cat and the de facto. Guess who’s gonna die first and and survive the hell hole? Riiiiiiight, you already knew since you’ve seen enough of this.

When it comes to camerawork though, Eli Roth actually gives justice to the film. The intro gives you a nice aerial view of the Peruvian Forest. It looked so lively and green I actually doubted if it’s real. Although it kinda sucks that the same aerial view was flashed several times making it look like filler. Prosthetics and sfx are actually splendid since it looks surreal and the film cutting is clean. Some soundtracks on certain scenes doesn’t really go well together making it too cheesy. Nice try with the shaky cam to achieve a documentary effect but its too jumpy it kinda gave me  motion sickness. Also, whenever its already on gruesome death scenes, the focus becomes blurred, too quick and too shaky making it difficult to watch. But when it comes to showing sensitive body parts, it takes 5-8 seconds of screen time, making it look like a torture porn flick. (where he is actually known for)

It is not the worst film of its kind, but it could have been so much better.  There’s a hint of a potential sequel, but let us hope they took notes and maybe create a firm and more polished plot on the next one.