The Green Inferno – Movie Review

The Green Inferno – R
Release Date: Fri 25 Sep 2015

The Green Inferno is a horror/adventure movie written and directed by Eli Roth and tells the story of a group of college activists who try to protest the destruction of a native tribe’s land deep in the Amazon. They are accidentally captured by the strange tribe and quickly find out that the tribe see them only as a source of food.

This is a movie that is supposed to be shocking and controversial but is neither. It feels like maybe 20 of the 100 minutes depict the scenes where the cannibals are doing scary, barbaric things to the students. The wait until this section begins seems like forever, and by the time you get there it doesn’t seem justified.

The movie starts by introducing us to the main character, Justine (Lorenza Izzo) and the protesters led by Alejandro (Ariel Levy.) They have several scenes where the entire team seems to change its mind about whether they feel safe about going only to be convinced again by Alejandro. They land in Peru and make their way to the bulldozing site they are going to protest. The protest happens. They are taken by the police and escorted back to their plane to leave the country. Everything so far is what felt like forever. It is not until they are headed back home that their plane crashes, killing several on board instantly and resulting in the rest being captured by the tribe.

If you have a fascination for the special effects, gore and the sequence with the cannibals, be sure to rent it so you can fast forward to those parts and only feel minor disappointment. Otherwise, this is going to be a very long 100 minutes of poor acting, terrible pacing and a ridiculous, sequel-bait ending.

Cal and I saw it in the theater and had a discussion in the car: