Review of Cannibal Holocaust (1980) by Faisal A — 13 Nov 2014

This may be an odd rating to give this film, especially due to it's infamous reputation. The film is extremely hard to watch. Everyone knows this, so I won't go into it any further than that. But I personally think that this film has a bad reputation for no reason.

Yeah, it's hard to watch, but A Clockwork Orange is hard to watch too, and that's labelled as a masterpiece. And while Cannibal Holocaust isn't as good as A Clockwork Orange, I did find some artistic merit in this film.

Most people, including me, probably expected a generic grindhouse film where the "savages" try to kill the "civilized people" for no reason. And that's actually extremely false.

The movie is unique from other cannibal films of the time because it offers a new look at things. Instead of the "savages" being the bad guys, the "civilized man" is the true savage.

Granted, maybe I'm just being a pretentious film critic who is trying to find a deeper meaning when in fact there is none, but when I watched this, I didn't see a film that is trying to be hard to watch for the sake of being hard to watch.

I saw a film that showed us how "civilized man" may actually be the true cannibals. And while it isn't perfect, and it doesn't capture it's message as good as it could have, it's alot better than people make it out to be.