Review of The Green Inferno (2013) by James R — 03 May 2017

Director Eli Roth is kinda a hit or miss for me. I enjoyed his two early films Cabin Fever (2002) and Hostel (2005), but then Hostel II (2007) was kinda garbage. He's produced a ton of things as well that I either enjoy or hate, but all in all he has a kind of B movie horror tone to his films and shows.

The Green Inferno itself was actually a movie that was completed back in 2013, but because the original distribution company went through financial issues this was shelved for two years until it was released.

So to the movie itself now. The film follows a young college girl named Justine (Lorenza Izzo). She joins a group of student activists led by a young man named Alejandro (Ariel Levy) into the Amazon rainforest to protest a company from tearing down the forest.

They get to the forest, but unfortunately are involved in a small plane accident. The group wakes up and is abducted by an indigenous cannibal tribe. Soon enough they start getting picked off one by one and it's up to Justine and the others to get out alive.

The movie itself is very low production. It was made for $5 million bucks and you can definitely tell. It's full of unknown actors and actresses and when CGi is used it looks pretty terrible. The dialogue was a huge issue for me.

It was so damn bad. I would even say atrocious at times. The movie is trying for a serious horror tone, but it often comes off as just way too cheesy to even be good. I will say the first 40 minutes of the film aren't bad.

Regardless of the dialogue it actually is setting up a pretty creepy story and I will say the lead actress Izzo is very likeable. I enjoyed the premise of the film, but as soon as we hit the tribe it just gets really off the rails.

I get it's going for gore (and truthfully I wasn't too shocked by it), but the movie isn't really that shocked or scary after a certain point which is a bummer because it would have made it more entertaining.

Overall, it's a skip unless you really are trying to watch a mediocre cannibalistic film. Which I'm assuming most people aren't.