The Green Inferno: Film Review
3:15 PM PDT 9/9/2013 by Deborah Young
Undigested cannibal yarn for Midnight Madness audiences is politically challenged but will scare. TWITTER
Multihyphenate Eli Roth is back directing another gory story with a nod to '70s and '80s horror.
An Amazonian cannibal yarn tipping its hat to the 1980 cult classic Cannibal Holocaust by Italian director Ruggero Deodato, but showing little sign of understanding that film's journey into the heart of darkness, The Green Inferno functions on the level of a scary if scatter-brained story whose wafting smell of baking flesh will draw Midnight Madness crowds. Eli Roth's return to the director's chair after Cabin Fever and Hostel 2 is a well-filmed R-rated scream fest designed to satisfy viewers' blood lust, though his childish determination to push the politically incorrect button as often and as hard as possible will dim the enthusiasm of a good number of college students who might otherwise have bought the DVD. Even before its bow in Toronto, a sequel was announced in the offing, though Roth will not direct it.
Roth the producer also has The Sacrament, Ti West's film about a religious cult inspired by Jonestown, bowing in Venice and Toronto.
THR's Complete Toronto Film Festival Coverage
Inferno's first half hour takes place on a posh university campus in New York, in a careful build-up that establishes the reason why a group of 15 students concerned about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest embarks on a mission to Peru to raise awareness about the plight of endangered Indian tribes.
On campus, the hunky, charismatic Alejandro (Ariel Levy) attracts the attention of Justine (Lorenza Izzo) when he stages a hunger strike for underpaid janitors. Despite the skepticism of her politically apathetic roommate (played with rolled eyes by Sky Ferreira), Justine buys into Alejandro's next cause: to save the Amazon. Her father, a lawyer at the U.N., disapproves but gives her the number of the U.S. ambassador to Peru, just in case. The film mercilessly mocks these rich students who embrace a far-away cause to satisfy their own vanity -- not least the lovely, naive Justine whose own motivation seems to be her physical attraction to Alejandro.
PHOTOS: The Scene at the Toronto Film Festival 2013
Anyone who has seen the poster and buys a movie ticket will anxiously anticipate what happens next: a plane crash and a terrifying encounter with a savage Indian tribe who paint their skin red and practice cannibalism. How ironic, the very people the students have come to save, eating them alive. As for the bloody Amazonian part of the film, one can only recall the closing line of Cannibal Holocaust: "I wonder who the real cannibals are," and hope that the Indian actors here were paid union scale.
Izzo, who co-starred with Roth-the-actor in Aftershock, is a fine genre actress, standing out from a cast of blonde women with her naturalistic performance and signs of courage and initiative. As the group's ambiguous political leader, Levy unapologetically strikes a Che Guevara pose, giving rise to the final lame gag. Along with Aaron Burns, who plays his comic sidekick with a crush on Justine, the main characters at least have personality traits. The Indians, of course, have no individuality because they have no "civilization."
Tech work is nothing fancy but generally to-the-point, with sweeping overhead shots of the rainforest (where it never rains) establishing the remote setting from which few return. Manuel Riveiro's music sounds like it was written for an adventure epic and lends a note of class.
Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Midnight Madness)
Production: Worldview Entertainment, Dragonfly Entertainment, Sobras International Pictures
Cast: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Aaron Burns, Sky Ferreira, Nicolas Martinez, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Magda Apanowicz
Director: Eli Roth
Screenwriters: Guillermo Amoedo, Eli Roth
Producers: Christopher Woodrow, Miguel Asensio, Molly Conners, Nicolas Lopez, Eli Roth
Executive producers: Maria Cestone, Sarah Johnson Redlich, Hoyt David Morgan
Co-producers: Amanda Bowers, Michael Romero
Director of photography: Antonio Quercia
Production designer: Nicholas Tong
Music: Manuel Riveiro
Editor: Ernesto Diaz Espinoza
Sales: Exclusive Media Group
No rating, 103 minutes
Deborah Young