Writer(s): Roth, and Guillermo Amoedo
Starring: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Aaron Burns, and Daryl Sabara
I'm going to admit that I had read some discouraging things about Eli Roth's The Green Inferno, and they did not prepare me for a positive experience (the most discouraging thing, I think, being the name "Eli Roth" behind it). They also didn't prepare me for just how ugly this finished film is. But then again, what should anyone have expected from a film that was finished in 2013, and then resigned to sitting on a shelf for two years?
Lorenza Izzo plays Justine, a college student who listens to a lecture about genital mutilation in one of her classes, and is then motivated to make a difference in the world. Well, actually her motivations are kind of mixed: She has the hots for an activist leader named Alejandro, which leads her to accept an invitation to join his group. During the first meeting, she makes a joke that offends Alejandro, and is immediately ordered to leave. One would think this would be the end of things, but Jonah, another member, goes to apologize on Alejandro's behalf and smooths things over.
Alejandro's group is going overseas to protest deforestation of the Amazon, and of course Justine thinks it's a great idea to join them, having literally met the leader just a few days prior, when he chewed her head off for telling a joke. Her roommate, Kaycee, mercifully decides to stay at home because she thinks the trip is too dangerous. It's merciful because Sky Ferreira, who plays Kaycee, is absolutely godawful as an actress—her entire “chops” consist of painting her face with a permanent scowl, and disgustedly reciting her lines, which come out with zero conviction. Not that anyone else in the cast is Oscar-worthy, but all of them at least rise above Ferreira's nonexistent standards.
The group boards a small plane, with the trip largely funded by Carlos, a shady drug-dealer. This whole operations seems completely legit so far, so Justine has absolutely no reason to question her decisions about rushing into this whole affair. The plane is small, but it gets them safely to where they need to go; they take boats the rest of the way to their destination.
The group (I'm not going to name anyone else because all of them serve ignorant, stereotypical functions, i.e. the fat guy in love with Justine, the funny guy, the woman threatened by Justine's presence, etc. and all of them die anyway) dress up like the corporate workers, and chain themselves to trees. This catches the attention of a militia, who go to remove them from the premises—a tough task, given that they are locked up—while the protesters film every second. Poor Justine must have missed the week where they went over how to close a lock, because as she tries to shut it, one of the men removes her from the tree, and threatens to blow her head off. He probably would have gone through with it had he not been reminded of all the cameras around. Faced with the fact his murder would be livestreamed to thousands of people, he relents, and instead all of them are put on a plane back home (after Carlos pays them off).
I'm not sure if Eli Roth is unsure of how the world works, or if he's attempting to mock it, but within the few minutes it takes for them to get put on the plane, their live video has not only gone viral, but they successfully stopped the loggers from ruining the forest. So let that be a lesson to you kids: All it takes to make a difference in today's society is a group of ten like-minded people, a video recorder, and ten minutes.
Anyhoo, one of the engines malfunction, and the plane goes down. Carlos and a couple of others-- including the co-pilot, who is decapitated--die during the crash; the rest are all uninjured, finding themselves in a section of the Amazon that they are not familiar with. Within mere minutes, all of them are either killed or captured by an indigenous tribe that does not appreciate them encroaching on their territory, no matter how unplanned it might have been. They are kept like animals in a wood cage, before being summoned, one-by-one, to the tribe leader, who decides their fates. Some get tired of waiting and try to escape, with expected results. And that's pretty much it.
I don't know if the issue is more Eli Roth's directing or writing incompetence, but Green Inferno is a mess from the beginning. The characters are entirely unlikable, if only for the reason we've seen them in dozens of movies, dozens of times. There's no attempt to even rationalize something as simple as why they're fighting for the causes they fight for—they're simply doing it because it is a convenient way for them to get stuck in the Amazon. It suffers from outright laziness, too: there's no point to any of this, besides watching cardboard characters meet graphic ends. This is the kind of movie for which I could give zero stars to and have no qualms over; in fact, it's the kind of film for which that rating is reserved for.
And yet, I can't. Everything is just so poorly planned and executed that The Green Inferno manages to be a special kind of entertaining, at least in parts. Part of the fun is debating as to whether or not Eli Roth is actually as stupid as he makes himself appear to be by making this film: any scene that doesn't involve graphic gore is treated with a complete lack of interest or concern. I get that this is a throwback to Italian Cannibal films like Cannibal Holocaust, but whereas that one at least had the creativity to pre-date the “found footage” horror subgenre by twenty years, and supposedly has some pointed things to say about the media (or not, depending on who you ask), The Green Inferno is just lowest-common-denominator garbage for indiscriminate horror fans.
Take the scene, for instance, where a female character dies. The group gets the idea to shove a bag of weed down her throat, so that when the villagers cook her body, they will inevitably get high. That Roth apparently thought this was even remotely a valid idea speaks to the ridiculousness of the entire premise; the fact that it works, with cooking vapors getting all 200 villagers completely stoned to the point of keeling over, shows that marijuana is another thing that Eli Roth doesn't quite understand.
At the very least, it gets one thing right: The blood is done entirely via practical effects, and are appropriately stomach-churning. It also pulls no punches: eyes are removed, limbs are hacked off, arrows penetrate necks, throats are slit, and CGI spiders start to eat a man, and then promptly disappear. In the case of all but the latter, they are impressively done, with what I would consider to be an “NC-17” level of spraying blood, if the MPAA was serious about using that rating for anything other than quick flashes of flaccid weiners, or graphic scenes of couples doing things that come naturally from within human nature.
But for all its incredible violence, it somehow doesn't have the guts to stray from the well-trodden horror formula: There's the last-minute reprieve of the main character from a grisly fate (a foreshadowing from one of the film's first scenes), and even the assisted escape by a small member of the tribe. It's formulaic shlock that undermine's Roth's apparent need to be considered an “edgy” director; by the end, the most shocking thing about The Green Inferno isn't the blood and guts, but rather the formulas that he is too afraid to subvert.
RATING: 1.5/10
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