The Green Inferno
(2015) 100 Min.
Rated: R (very gory)
Country: Chile / USA
Director: Eli Roth
Starring: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Aaron Burns
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
A young woman joins an activist group to protest the destruction of a jungle tribe and gets captured by that tribe.
Synopsis:
Justine is a college freshman from an upperclass upbringing who becomes interested in social activism after learning about Female Genital Mutilation. She meets Alejandro, a leader of a social activist group. Alejandro is planning for the group to fly to Peru to stop deforestation and destruction of a village of natives in a rainforest. His plan is that the group will video their protest and livestream it via satellite.
Justine goes against the warnings of her father and roommate, Kaycee, and takes a trip to Peru to chain herself to a tree. The group infiltrates the camp of workers by dressing in their clothing and chaining themselves to trees as they film themselves. Justine finds that her chain doesn’t lock properly. When the militia comes to investigate the disruption, one of the men pulls Justine aside and points a gun to her head, meanwhile the rest of the group films it. Alejandro tells the militia that Justine is the daughter of a U.N. attorney. The militia does not shoot her. They take everyone and put them back on a small plane.
The group celebrates on the plane, except for Justine who feels betrayed. Suddenly the engine blows and the plane crashes in the jungle. Among the survivors are Alejandro, Justine, Lars, Jonah, Amy and Samantha. Native tribal peoples dart these survivors and carry them off.
The tribe bring the new arrivals to their village. They are cannibals and believe the group to be part of the bulldozing crew and therefore an enemy worthy of eating.
First they pull Jonah, who has generally been the most kind to Justine. He has his eyes gouged out one by one and then his tongue cut out. The chief/priestess woman does this and then the tribe cuts off Jonah’s limbs as he screams. Finally she cuts off his head and displays it for the tribe. They cook Jonah’s body in a kiln and they eat it.
Justine, Samantha and Amy are temporarily removed from the cage and are stripped of their underwear. The village elder sticks her long claw into each of the girl’s vaginas and finds that Justine’s spills blood which is taken as she is a virgin. The villagers rejoice. Justine is painted and prepared for a ceremony later.
Samantha and Amy are returned to the cage and devise a plan to escape. They distract one of the tribesmen with a broken phone playing music as Samantha climbs through the bars in the cage ceiling. She makes a mad dash for the river and a nearby canoe and jumps inside.
The next day, villagers bring the prisoners bowls of slop. As Amy finishes her meal she sees skin marked with a tattoo at the bottom of her bowl. She looks around and sees other villagers playing with fragments of tattooed skin that she recognizes to be Samantha’s. Amy shatters her bowl on the floor and slits her own throat with a shard.
Amy is dead and the others decide to stuff marijuana down her throat since the tribe will likely cook and eat her.
Alejandro reveals that he was paid by a competing company to halt the clearing done by the current company. Alejandro is willing to sacrifice people who are part the team.
The tribe does cook Amy and become inebriated by the drug. Justine and Daniel are able to escape, but Lars is hit with a dart by Alejandro who doesn’t want to die alone. Lars is then eaten alive by the hungry tribe who now have the munchies.
Justine and Daniel make their way back to the crash site where they find the bodies of the other passengers are now propped up on long stakes. They hear a phone in the pocket of one of the dead passengers and pull it out. The tribe, however, finds them and takes them back to the village.
Daniel is taken and tied to a stake. He then is smeared in a green substance and large ants begin to bite him.
Justine is prepared for a ceremony in which she will undergo female genital mutilation. Just before the ceremony takes place another villager warns of the loggers coming and presents a head of a logger. The elder directs the rest of the tribe to go and fight the loggers.
One of the village children who has ten an interest in Justine and her necklace lets Justine loose. She then sees Daniel suffering in the village and he asks her to kill him. The village child cuts his throat.
Alejandro, still caged, asks Justine to help him but she ignores him. The child and Justine run into the forest. She offers her necklace to the child. She runs out further to the frontline of the battle and pretends to record the event with the phone. She screams at the militia men and one of them recognizes her from earlier. She is taken away and returned home.
Justine, back in New York, reports that most of her friends died in the crash and that the villagers were kind to her and helped protect her.
Justine has nightmares about Alejandro. She looks outside of her dorm and sees activists wearing t-shirts printed with Alejandro’s face on them (much like Che Guevara).
After the credits roll for a bit, it is interrupted by a phone call to Justine. A woman who claims to be Alejandro’s sister Lucia says that she has found a satellite gps image that seems to show her brother alive in the jungle. A blurry image of Alejandro in the jungle is shown.
Review:
This film is Eli Roth’s love letter to cannibal films. Does it do them justice? Well, in my opinion it seems to be on par with the rest of them. There are clear references to other cannibal films. Albeit through a kind of safe and certainly higher budget version of a cannibal film. There isn’t quite as much crudeness as some of the original films, but there certainly seem to be the elements of violence and violation.
The message of the film seems to be muddled. Are we rooting for the tribe or the activists? Has Justine learned a lesson in getting involved with quick activism groups who “Don’t Think”? I’m not entirely certain Eli Roth thought this through.
The gore, for the most part, is fairly sparse but when it is on display the carnage pulls no punches. It’s a film that has some interesting gore effects as well as vibrant colors and alluring cinematography.
The pacing is fairly even, but I would say the tone of the film is odd at times. There are sad attempts at humor that I didn’t find fitting with the film. The part where suddenly one of the prisoners has diarrhea right after Jonah dies and the segment where Alejandro masturbates to relieve stress. They’re unfunny and meaningless. If they’re intended to broach the tension, well it’s unneeded. There is an unintentionally funny part where Daniel is covered in unrealistic looking CGI ants. It reminds me too much of the Nicolas Cage version of Wicker Man and his “not the bees!!” scene.
I can’t say that I can recommend this film too highly, but it was entertaining enough for what it was. I can also say that I’m somewhat easily entertained and this film wasn’t too offensive. It is fairly gory, but it also isn’t scary. There’s some tension and that’s about it!