The Green Inferno.- Eli Roth (2013)

The Green Inferno.- Eli Roth (2013)

By: Ghost Writer

Few horror movies have shocked me to the extreme, the way Eli Roth's Hostel did, it shocked me even more than the gruesome Japanese movie called Audition, a movie that I heard was pretty shocking to Roth, despite not being a very original movie, based on an urban legend, Hostel really took things to the extreme, by Western standards, it become a cult movie and made Roth a well-known name within the American Horror cinema. 

Following Roth's not too original modus operandi, his 2013 movie The Green Inferno comes as a super ambitious film, based on 70s Italian classic horror movie Cannibal Holocaust, Roth attempts to take things to the extreme again, but this time failing miserably, it was supposed to be based on CH, but at the same time it was described as social criticism and an attempt at capturing the dream like qualities of films by legendary filmmakers Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick, as social criticism, it is a very mediocre one, it lacks an overwhelming message, and it was carried badly by totally unsympathetic actors, and as a homage to the aforementioned filmmakers, The Green Inferno is mediocre, it doesn't even capture the sense of discomfort Cannibal Holocaust was capable of doing. 

Honestly I watched the movie yesterday, I was curious about the Herzog and Malick quote, but it was truly misguided, the only point of comparison is the exuberant setting, but it is never treated in the same majestic way of Werner or Terence, while the most gruesome scenes look too cheap, they are not as shocking and astonishing as the ones in the Italian classic, the documentary quality of Cannibal Holocaust was replaced by an almost mockumentary quality which makes the fill a long and boring unsurprising catastrophe. 

The Green Inferno obviously falls too short from the expectations created by his author, Roth's fame as actor and friend of Quentin Tarantino, keeps overshadowing his work as filmmaker, and the legendary Hostel is keeping the bar too tall for him to ever surpass it, he is still a wild card, capable of going beyond the limits of the horror genre, but he is lacking these days the spark, the shock, or the novelty that accompanied his early films, Cannibal Holocaust was a phenomenon in the 70s, its originality is undeniable, perhaps we were too naive at the time, it was kind of The Blair Witch Project for the 70s, perhaps the world has lost that innocence and reality has widely surpassed fiction, but is up to Roth to shock us again in the future.