Review of Cannibal Holocaust (1980) by Lateef R — 14 Jun 2011

I was kind of expecting this to be a thoughtlessly unrealistically typical borderline live cartoon "Atari Jungle Hunt" type movie where natives in the jungle are being depicted maneating cannibal savages that hemm some explorers up and then torment and eat them for 90 minutes, but it turned out to be a movie that actually had a very strong message that wouldn't have gotten across without the disturbingly brutal and graphic scenes and acts that went down. Although the real animal killing was a little hard to watch, most Americans have no problem EATING animals that they see prepared in the supermarket after the fact, so it's stupid to act squeamish about what is TRULY a normal process that most people seem to conveniently ignore when it comes to food.

I really liked the way they told the back story in B-Roll Raw Footage style and when you look at the date this movie was made, it came out WAAAAY before Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield and all those little emo films that had absolutely NO conscious point to get across aside from establishing cheap scares from first person POV.

All I can say about this movie is EVERYTHING that encompasses "IT" when it comes to what is considered off-kilter and disturbing whether it be sexually explicity or vileness, this film SHOWED IT. But not in an exploited gross out gory way, it was more of an attempt to make a REALISTIC movie about nosey people who take cameras into places they don't belong and don't understand in hopes to go around and fuck with people and end up getting their ass handed to them.