Review of The Green Inferno (2013) by Ewc O — 06 Dec 2015

Green Inferno is an interesting movie from the perspective of the title. Inferno is the place that is usually colored red. Inferno is fire and hell but it is modified by green. From the beginning, the leading roles are seemly good and selfless, but in the end of the movie, selfishness shows without doubt. This movie mainly talks about the interaction of anthropophagites and civilization. When capitalists greedily plunder the land that aboriginals own for centuries, a group of college students want to help them and become famous. Initially, they consider themselves to be the saviors of indigenous peoples, whereas what they try to protect is who destroys them. The anthropophagites are considered they are barbarian and inhumane, but the truth is always opposite to what audience's primordial stereotype.

The truth of indigenous peoples is not as good as they imagine after their aircraft crashes and lands to a primitive nucleated village. When they are celebrating their achievement on the aircraft, the aircraft suddenly catches fire and soon crashes. As soon as they crash, half of the people die. When the survivors try to find a way out of the jungle, suddenly arrows fly towards them and kill some people. After the rest of the survivors wake up, they are brought to the village. They are in the village, all the villagers gather and touch them eagerly. The villagers' sights seem like the sights to enemies and want to tear them and eat them. The shaman fixes one of them on a stone. Firstly, she pulls out his eyeballs and eats them, and secondly she cuts down his tongue and eats it. After that, the first killer of anthropophagites cuts down the limbs of his and separately distribute to the other villagers. Finally, the torso is sent into the kiln to roast it. The indigenous people treat them like enemies, and the brutal behaviors are really cruel and ferocious.

The college students are all altruistic, but to audience's surprise, when anthropophagites are trying to eat them, the egoism is expressed completely. When the characters are caged by the men-eaters'. The male leading role is happy when one of the companions is eaten by the men-eaters because he thinks it can help them save some days. Also, one of the female companions escaped, but the others do not whether she is successful or not. However, when they see some children of anthropophagites put some pieces of skin with tattoo on their bodies as decoration, they know she is caught back and torn into pieces. The male leading role is gratified to have been spared from the misfortune. After that, a woman among them commits suicide due to the death the previous victim who is her lover. Two men and the female leading role put amphetamine into the body of the woman killed by herself, and after anthropophagites grills the body and eat it, they have surreal images in their minds. Thus, the college students seize this opportunity to escape from the cage. When the last one of the three escapers is climbing out of the cage, the male leading role attacks the last one for fear that he will be eaten firstly after the others escape successfully.

The female leading role covers the truth for the anthropophagites, which claims they are friendly and benevolent. At the end, the female leading role is helped by a little boy of the indigenous people to get out of the jungle. After that, she witnesses the battle between the invaders of forest and the indigenous people. She stops the battle between them and is rescued by the invaders. Thus, all the people are very curious about what happened there. She just claims that everyone except her dies of the air crash, and she is saved by the aboriginal people. She does not notice any anger or enmity of the aboriginal people. I think the reason she covers truth that they eat men is that the female leading role is aware that even though the aboriginal people are brutal, the behaviors are for self-protection. The aboriginal people also raise cattle for food, which shows human beings are not their main source of food.

The contrast between their imagination and the reality shocks all the audience. Whether the anthropophagites are evil or not is the idea that this movie tries to alert the audience. From time to time, civilized people always consider themselves to be the saviors of aboriginals' barbarian behaviors, but actually civilized people are truly the invaders and occupy aboriginals' land for economic purpose. In this movie, it seems that the anthropophagites are wrong to eat men, but why they do so is very important. It is all because of the invasion of civilized people.