The Green Inferno
So I'm slightly inebriated and just realised this got delivered. I'll start by saying I've wanted to like Eli Roth, but I've found a few of his previous films not living up to the hype. I hope it's different here. He's a huge fan of the cannibal films of the 80's so I'm hoping he does this justice!
The female genitalia mutulation scene early on is quite shocking, didn't expect to see that so early on haha! I hate the white chick in this, instantly. She looks like a crackhead. The dialogue with the prettier white chick and Allessandro or whatever seems awkward and unnatural. The little love triangle thing instantly bored me too, there's just no need.
The basic story follows that Justine meets an activist called Alejandro who wants to save the Amazon. Smitten, she agrees... but soon regrets her decision when their plane crashes in the Peruvian Jungle and their group are taken captive by bloodthirsty cannibals.
LOL @ a tarantula almost biting the guys cock while he stopped for a piss! Should have done it. Or had him shoot his dick off. Either would have been cooler than neither. The supporting cast do well though and the story is building nicely at this point. They plane crashed where the driver gets a pole through his face is pretty cool, someone catches a propeller blade to the face too which is decent but not nearly as gory as Id like and over all too fast.
The travellers/activists are soon ambushed by the cannibals - mostly shot with either poison darts or arrows shot at them. The cannibals camp or village is displayed really well with several severed heads and rib cages lining pointed pieces of wood and the cannibals themselves all coated in a rich red blood looking colour. Great stuff. There's more than a few nods to Cannibal Holocaust at this point which was great for me as a fan of the genre! I disliked the "look" if the cannibal chief at this point (Crack Sparrow) just when I was really digging this flick. The pig pen almost reminded me of Cannibal Ferox so I did enjoy seeing them running around haha! The eyes being torn out and eaten was a cool scene, if a little over the top, but lord knows how the tongue removal and limb dismemberment made it past the excessive violence regulators - of the head dismemberment and blood drinking. Thoroughly entertaining stuff! The idea of the captives "smelling" their friend being cooked works well, too. I thought it was a nice touch - vastly overlooked - Roth did well with that idea. The scenes of meat slog being stripped from bone with sharpened tools is nicely done too and well thought out. There's then a scene where one of the captives needs to shit real bad while in the pen they're all trapped. It's long, noisy, and meant to be amusing but I found it anything but. I'd have almost certainly cut that.
Crack Sparrow the cannibal leader seems to insert some giant blade-cum-tusk into the three women's vaginas to see if they're virgins. Only the final one passes the test by bleeding onto the tusk/sharpened bone. This seems to delight the cannibal kind, but she's soon thrown back in the wooden cage with the other "survivors". The captives are fed some meat of their former friend, unknowingly, and when one female friend in particular realises - she breaks a pot into shards and slits her own throat in horror! Alejandro decides to masturbate, as you would with a corpse next to you with its throat slit. Regardless, the guys hit on a genuis plan to hide some pot they have INSIDE THE CORPSE of the suicidal woman... The belief being, as she's cooked alive, it will stone the lot of them. As ridiculous as it seems, it works, with some so stoned they fall from their tree perches whiles others lie laughing with their friends. Inevitably, they then get the munchies and want to eat - tearing apart one of the male captives in what I'd say is a knowing nod to the film Maniac right at its climax. Good stuff! There's a hugely pointless scene where one chick jumps in a muddy river and gets washed away upstream and needs saving. She's saved within about 30 seconds. There is literally no point to this happening and it feels out of place. I'd cut it. So we follow two survivors as they're attempting to escape... only their plan is foiled, and they're soon recaptured. The females body is strapped up in stocks and she's being prepped for a meal as her friend is tied to a wooden stake and hacked to pieces, slowly, limb for limb. The hogtied female seems as if she is being prepped for something more significant. The male is then covered in ants that proceed to bite his skin as he suffers and its prolonged. Eventually, a young native cannibal boy the chick had befriended earlier in the film agrees to free her and show her to freedom. She escapes. Just as she's finally rescued, there's a scene where a helicopter pilot asks if there was anyone else left to save. She says no, despite knowing Alejandro is still trapped in a cage with the cannibals - and is most likely their next meal! This could make way for a sequel, I guess? Maybe with him as the head of the cannibals, maybe something different all together? The ending was okay, maybe not the sickening/disturbing sort of thing I had hoped but definitely not bad and with a few flashes of brilliance brought to keep me interested in Eli Roth and his potential. When he gets it right, I thoroughly enjoy his stuff, but certain parts just seem a little corny or amateurish to me - the shit scene in particular with this film, I just don't feel like it's the type of film that needed that toilet humour. Maybe it's just me? Anyway, I enjoyed this movie, loved seeing the decapitation and dismemberment relatively early on - I can see a few people not liking this as much, but others appreciating the nods to the films gone by, which is certainly how I viewed it. If I'm not missing something, I feel the lead female painted white with the red band over the eyes could be a cult image many will recognise for years to come!
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