Film Review: "The Green Inferno" (2013).

"Fear will consume you" in The Green Inferno. This cannibal horror film directed by Eli Roth, and written by Roth and Guillermo Amoedo. The film follows New York college student Justine, a lawyer's daughter, who meets a student activist named Alejandro when he goes on a hunger strike on behalf of underpaid janitors. Smitten, Justine agrees to help Alejandro undertake his next project: to save the Amazon. She soon learns to regret her decision when their plane crashes in the Peruvian jungle and she and the rest of their group are taken captive by a tribe of hungry cannibals.

In mid May 2012, at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Roth announced that he was planning to direct a cannibal horror thriller, with a script written by Roth and Amoedo. Inspired by the Italian cannibal films of the late 1970s and early '80s "cannibal boom", particularly Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and Cannibal Ferox (1981). By early November, Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Nicolás Martínez, Daryl Sabara, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Magda Apanowicz, Aaron Burns, Sky Ferreira, and Richard Burgi were cast. Roth would only audition actors who agreed to be vaccinated for yellow fever. At the same time, principal photography commenced, and wrapped in late December. Filming took place in Tarapoto, Peru; Santiago, Chile; and New York City. Roth cited the films of Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick as visual influences. When Roth and his crew approached villagers to be extras in the film, he soon realized that they had never seen a movie and had no concept of what one was. To demonstrate what a movie was, Eli brought a TV and a copy of Cannibal Holocaust and had a screening for everyone. The villagers loved it and gladly acted in the film. Almost every villager signed up to be in the film. Some of them were part of the crew. Scorching temperatures reached about 110 degrees during filming, which caused a Peruvian camera crew to quit on their first day. While the whole cast suffered from bug bites, Blanton had to be hospitalized. Izzo nearly drowned on set. At the end of filming, Roth disclosed that the tribe offered a two-year-old child to the production designer as a "thank you" for including them in the film. The production designer politely declined the offer. The cast and crew were all then treated for parasites. 

The film stars Izzo, Levy, Martínez, Sabara, Blanton, Apanowicz, Burns, Ferreira, and Burgi. The performances contributed to the horrific realism of the film, even though, apart from Izzo, they were obvious victims for the slaughter.

It's a weird movie with an awkward narrative, which Roth makes all the more effective with his grimy sheen of documentary realism, while Manuel Riveiro's unsettlingly lovely, elegiac score provides a weird undercurrent. While it's hard to defend the director for some of the truly repugnant images with which he has chosen to convey his message, there is indeed an underlying point to the film, if one is able to look beyond the sometimes unwatchable images that assault the viewer.

Simon says The Green Inferno receives: