Review of Cannibal Holocaust (1980) by Joe F — 25 Mar 2012

I've been afraid of watching this for a long time and to be fair, it is quite disturbing but not as I expected it to be. What I was surprised with, was with how actually smart and well executed this lil' gem is. I don't believe the director didn't had a point to this and that he only wanted to make a movie about cannibals. This is viscious critical satire from an angry man that unfortunently fell a bit on what he was trying to preach.

The way the story unfolds from classic boys in the woods about to be kicked, onto found footage territory is brilliant. Editing is spot-on and makes appreciate the thematics much better this way. The acting is pretty poor, though the emotional connection is not needed. You have to hate these pricks in the end after all.

There's shots which are just too gratuitous and add nothing to the film unfortunently. The animal killings are excused and are doing nothing in the film other than to increase the shock value. Not needed, when you had very subtle and affecting violence before, and outrageous gore later on.

Interesting on all perspectives, this will surely be talked in years to come.