Cannibals rip apart and feast on innocent travelers in Eli Roth’s new gore-filled thriller, “The Green Inferno.”
The film hit theaters Sept. 25, proving the cannibal-horror genre is still alive.
The movie begins in New York City with roommates Justine (Lorenza Izzo) and Kaycee (Sky Ferreira), who are freshmen in college.
The first half hour of the movie feels like a made-for-TV film. The dialogue is unbearable and just unnecessary. At one point, Kaycee and Justine are talking about bagels, and Justine says she doesn’t want one. Kaycee replies, “You secretly wanna starve yourself.” Justine responds, “Yeah, what girl doesn’t?”
The terse conversation was probably intended to be funny and relatable, but it joked about a serious topic and made it hard to take the movie seriously.
Justine meets an older guy, Alejandro (Ariel Levy), who’s in charge of an activist group. She joins him and seven other students on a trip to the Amazon rainforest, where they plan to raise awareness about the destruction of forests and native tribes by filming the demolition on their cell phones.
Once the characters travel to the jungle, the plot of the movie starts to unfold. Unfriendly natives with empty stomachs have no problem tearing apart the travelers and cooking them for dinner.
Those with a weak stomach will likely cover their eyes often. Jonah (Aaron Burns), a bubbly student, is the first to be killed. The head native pins him down, and viewers see a brutal extraction of both eyeballs. As if that’s not enough, the cannibal eats each eye while the rest of the tribe cheers behind him.
The movie, gore-wise, doesn’t get much worse after that. The students spend some time captured in a cage and attempt to plot an escape while the natives laugh at their fear. It’s a weird situation to watch unfold.
One of the more entertaining parts of the film occurs when a student, who has marijuana on him, sneaks the substance into a cooking body, which the natives will soon eat. Within minutes of having dinner, the natives are laughing hysterically and making jokes to one another. High cannibals serve as a hilarious form of entertainment.
The film left a queasy feeling, but that means it fulfilled its purpose. Although the storyline doesn’t start immediately, it’s worth suffering through the bad parts to get to the gross scenes.
kolbee14@bonaventure.edu
