The Green Inferno ....finally.

No matter what, KEEP STREAMING!

I watched The Green Inferno after what's been a long and painful wait.

Let's talk about it!

In 2013 we were told about a new Eli Roth film that involved gore, cannibals, and the jungle. And we patiently waited until 2014 to see it. But then the production company ran out of money and The Green Inferno was removed from release. We mourned, we were angry, we thought about protesting but then worried that would be ironic. And eventually it was released last September through Blumhouse.

Green Inferno is a splatter horror film directed and written by Roth. It stars a pretty great cast including Lorenza Izzo and Daryl Sabara and the film is inspired by all those old Italian cannibal films during the cannibal boom of the 70's and 80's. Specifically of course, Cannibal Holocaust which is where The Green Inferno actually gets its title.

The film follows Justine who is a college freshman whose father works for the United Nations. She becomes interested in social activism like most college freshman do and joins a group led by a guy named Alejandro who is extremely passionate about the cause, along with his girlfriend Kara. The group are planning a trip to the Amazon rain forest where they plan to protest and stop a big company who are logging the rain forest and destroying the homes of the ancient native tribes that live there.


When the group arrives in Peru they meet the young guy who is apparently funding it and organizing it all, Carlos. The protest involves the group wearing masks, chaining themselves to the trees and equipment and filming the entire thing while streaming it live to the internet to hold the bad guys accountable. Alejandro and Kara make sure that Justine's lock doesn't close so when the loggers come over and start grabbing at the kids, Justine gets pulled from her perch and has a gun held to her head. Alejandro yells out that her father works for the United Nations and basically just uses Justine as a pawn. Needless to say, Justine is pissed. But the protest works and the group get back on their plane thrilled to have made a change.

But then the plane crashes. And everything goes to hell in a hand basket.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

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After a gory plane wreck, including one idiot walking in front of the still spinning propeller after the plane's landed and getting the entire side of his head demolished, the survivors begin to regroup and find a way out. But the ancient native tribe they were just protecting come out of the jungle and knock them all unconscious with darts.
You see, the group are wearing the same clothes as the logging company, and they're a bunch of white folks who speak English. So to the tribe, they're the enemy.

When the group wakes up they are led into the village and there is a very intense scene where there's hundreds of tribes people grabbing and groping the girls, touching their face and their hair. As someone who can't stand people touching her, this scene really had me shook. And the girls did a great job of acting out the emotion of this crazy, claustrophobic scene.

Immediately one of the guys, Jonah is killed, very slowly - eyes gouged out and eaten, tongue ripped out, legs cut off, arms ripped off while Jonah screams and bleeds like crazy. It was a tough watch. The tribe then prepares Jonah's body and cook it while the rest of the survivors are kept in a cage in view of everything. While in the cage, Alejandro reveals to everyone that the protest they partook in was a fraud. They were hired by a bigger logger company to get the smaller logging company off of the land so the rival operation could move in. Which....I mean....maybe just keep your mouth shut at that point?

Alejandro was a great villain, but sometimes not so believable. There's one point where Alejandro is jerking it in the cage with everyone around him and he's doing it because it helps him "clear his mind". And some of the comments he makes especially when some of them are trying to escape are just nuts. I just don't believe that a guy in a situation like this would act like that.

During a very intense scene, our lead Justine and two of the other female survivors, Sam and Amy, are pulled out in front of the tribe and stripped down to their underwear. The lead woman of the tribe discovers Justine is a virgin in a very uncomfortable way and decides to perform genital mutilation on her. You've probably heard whispers of this scene. When Sam and Amy are put back in the cage, Sam distracts the tribe and manages to escape. I'm assuming she dies? I may have missed the reveal. But I didn't see her/or hear of her again.

When Justine is put back in the cage while the tribe prepares for the mutilation, they are offered some food. All of them eat quickly but when Amy reaches the bottom of her bowl she notices a piece of skin with one of Jonah's tattoos on it and realizes they've all been eating Jonah. Which, duh. What else would they feed them? Amy loses her shit, smashes her bowl, and slices her throat wide open. Which seems a tad dramatic. But she was a vegan. So....

Things get a little weird at this point....Lars finds weed that he stashed in his boot from earlier and decides to shove it down Amy's throat. The thought being that when the tribe cooks her, they'll get high as fuck from eating Amy. And strangely enough it works? The tribe are all giggling and falling over. This scene seemed way out of place and the logistics behind it? I don't think so.

During this mess, Justine and Daniel escape, Lars tries but Alejandro stops him by stabbing him because he doesn't want to get eaten. Justine and Daniel make it back to the original plane crash site only to find the tribesmen have hung up all the dead bodies. The duo manage to find a working cell phone in Kara's pocket but unfortunately the tribesmen capture them again and drag them back to camp.

Justine is now being prepared for her genital mutilation ceremony while Daniel is tied to a post, has all his bones broken and then is fed to ants. Which gave me major flashbacks to the time when I was 6 and lived in the jungle and fell into a fire ants nest. I was covered in those motherfuckers and it was one of the scariest moments of my life. Moral of the story? Maybe don't raise your 6 year old in a jungle? I had waaaayyyy too many close calls including a rattlesnake I thought was an actual rattle, and swimming with a tarantula.

ANYWAY, after a very tense (like crazy tense - one of the best moments of the film) moment where the tribe leader is waving her knife around Justine's vajayjay, the tribe is suddenly interrupted by a member wielding a head in a yellow helmet (which is the uniform of the loggers) and all of a sudden the entire tribe goes running into the jungle. A small boy comes forward and releases Justine. After grabbing the phone from Daniel she escapes into the jungle and stumbles upon the tribe being gunned down by the loggers. She steps out of the jungle, holding up her phone, and pretends she is filming/streaming the situation. The logger grabs her and she is finally sent back home to America.

Back in America, Justine lies about what happened. She tells her father and the UN that the tribe helped her survive, fed her, and tried to help her get out of the jungle until they were gunned down by the loggers. When Justine looks around the campus she sees a new group of social activists wearing a picture of Alejandro on their shirts.

Apparently there's also an after credits scene which was not included in my itunes rental (GODDAMNIT ITUNES) which sounds bad ass - Justine is talking to Alejandro's sister and finds out the sister has located Alejandro....and he's alive....DANNNNGGGGG

END OF SPOILERS

Well....I enjoyed it. I think unfortunately we all hyped ourselves up too much about this film. People who first got to see it back in 2013 were talking about how people fainted and puked while watching it. And then we had two years to sit there and stew and obsess over this film. So of course, it will never live up to our expectations.

But putting those expectations aside - it was a fun watch. I think it would've been more fun to watch it with a group of people so you could all scream about the violence and gore. The gore itself isn't so much you can't stand it. Obviously, some of the scenes I wouldn't recommend if you're a little sensitive but I'm not big on gore and I didn't care. I enjoyed the watch immensely and I'll definitely be watching it again.

The story itself isn't super strong, but it gets the point across. You'd have to be an idiot not to understand what Roth was preaching.

Watch this trailer first, then figure out if you're down for the Green Inferno:
Click here because youtube won't let me embed it

I give it an 8/10. Eli Roth haters can suck it. CANNIBALS YEY!

Stay spooky!