31 Days Of Horror (Day 9) - The Green Inferno (2013)

Things go bump in the night, others will devour your soul, some will slice, dice eat your heart with a nice glass of Chianti. October has now arrived which can mean only one thing 31 Days of Horror has now arrived again. For the next 31 days, we will dive deep into the catacombs of horror to pick you a movie. Every day will be different ranging from the classics to the weird and wonderful. Many you might have heard of, some will be new to you. There will be personal favourites that you may like, others you may hate but they all will unleash those emotions that make us love horror.

Day 9 Aly LLalji third movie, The Green Inferno.When students want to save the Amazon Forest they might be the group of people with the same idea. But they don’t share the same reason!

There is nothing wrong with sticking with what you know. Eli Roth does what he does best. He sticks to the genre of horror like flies to shit. The man is the king of directing disgust, gore and torture like no other, proving that The Human Centipede director, Tom Six is the prince that wants to assume Roth’s throne. Here’s the news sports fans, Roth isn’t going anywhere as he maintains his legacy to shock and disturb with his cannibal killer of a film.

If he wants to be like Stanley Kubrick whose films are long-awaited, in this case, seven years since his Hostel Part 2, it better be worth the wait. The good news is The Green Inferno impresses with a great premise, an arc that builds to extreme tension and captivating colourful cinematography of the green Amazon.

Films like Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox had its heydey. It made its mark and created an Italian cannibal genre. They are B movies that are dated nonetheless, hence for Roth to revisit this controversial cannibal premise on a $6 million budget and set it in today’s era is a great scheme, as today’s generation need to be reminded that these films deliver to the horror fans just as effective as pizza.

NYC university student Justine played by Lorenza Izzo conforms to political activism and protest. She is influenced by a campus activist group’s naive plan to travel to Peru. There they plan to bring to an end the destruction of an endangered tribe by a corrupt construction company intending to drill for oil and wealth. But after a horrific plane crash that leaves half the activists dead, the survivors are caged by the very tribe they were trying to aid. The fun and horror begin, as they discover the tribe are brutal cannibals.

The film grabs the viewer’s attention immediately as we are engaged in Roth’s influence of Kubrick’s The Shining. The panoramic helicopter opening title sequence presents the beautifully dangerous unmapped green landscape of below, as a pathway of the horror that will soon unfold.

As soon as the macabre cannibal violence takes place, the viewer is left to shiver down the spine and feel nauseous. The squeamish may require sick bags as they see the queen of the tribe cut out the first victims tongue and munch on it like a rare tender steak. Candidly speaking horror fans will be challenged as they watch graphic hacking off limbs and barbecuing it as the cannibals take pleasure in their feast, whilst the remaining victims watch, caged in agony. Roth’s attempted humour and black comedy are attention-grabbing although doesn’t advance the plot, as he uses his blonde bimbo captive to accentuate extreme diarrhoea whilst her inmates are yards away from her. This is clearly for the sake of shock value.

All in all, the film delivers with determination and disgust. It leaves the viewers the question to peruse. Are the westerners just as dire as the cannibal tribes? Considering we invade their land and rainforest transforming nature to extinction. Every horror fan will be impressed by Roth’s come back on gore as he won’t fail them. The question is will he fail us on his ‘Death Wish’ remake?