The Green Inferno
Director- Eli Roth
Cast- Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy
Country of Origin- U.S.
Distributor - Scream Factory
Number of discs – 1
Reviewed by - Bobby Morgan
Date- 06/20/2019
Eli Roth loves horror. He takes every chance he can get to verbally express his love for the genre in which he made a name for himself as a director, emerging around the same time early the previous decade alongside the likes of Rob Zombie and James Wan. Nearly every documentary made about horror made in the past fifteen years has featured an appearance from Roth, but if one was made where the subject was Italian horror, he’d be there with a big, geeky grin on in a heartbeat.
I’ve never been a big fan of Roth’s movies, though I remember fondly the day I first saw his breakout feature Cabin Fever on the big screen and felt as if I had witnessed the beginning of a filmmaking career with great promise. Since then, Roth has occasionally realized that promise only to take a huge step backwards. He seems intent on recreating the horror cinema he grew up loving, the fright fests and splatter bonanzas that made him devour issues of Fangoria and want to direct movies of his own one day.
The Green Inferno is Roth’s starry-eyed love letter to the Italian cannibal film, a sordid subgenre of horror that in its heyday attracted more controversy than box office depending on the flick. Roth has made no bones countless times in the past about his passionate affection for that magical time in cinematic history when erudite Italian filmmakers like Ruggero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi assembled teams of fearless technicians and actors desperate for their big break and ventured into the unforgiving jungles of South America to make movies about horrible white people being hunted down, chopped into quivering slices of bloody beef, and devoured voraciously by tribes of cannibalistic savages.
More often than not, there was at least one character who believed cannibals didn’t exist; by the end of the movie, you could be assured that regardless of whether or not that character’s lower extremities didn’t end up some face-painted primitive’s bedtime snack, their belief would definitely be challenged.
The Green Inferno sure does contain all the proper ingredients for a choice cut of celluloid cannibal mayhem, starting with a barebones plot ripe for exploitation. Central to the narrative is Justine (Lorenza Izzo), a college freshman with a father (Richard Burgi) employed as a lawyer for the United Nations and a yearning to make a difference, be it great or small, in this complicated and often troubling world. She joins up with a group of student activists led by Alejandro (Ariel Levy) and his girlfriend Kara (Ignacia Allamand) who are journeying to a rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon to stop a logging company from tearing down more trees and further endangering the already fragile environment.
Well, that’s a different plot hook than one might expect from a genre Sleazoid Xpress publisher Bill Landis once dubbed “cannibal vomitorium”. And obviously we wouldn’t have much of a movie had the shit not metaphorically hit the fan once Justine and the finest ensemble cast a $5 million budget could afford on short notice arrived in the rainforest in the name of environmental justice. The protest – which involves chains, live streaming, and an armed militia – goes about as well as expected, and soon our noble pork chops are being herded by the authorities onto a plane which promptly crashes deep in the jungle and leaves our survivors (which include Justine and a bunch of characters whose names I couldn’t remember so I’ll just call them Bearded Dude, Bearded Dude #2, Sexy Lady, Other Sexy Lady, and The Male Spy Kid) to suffer horrific torture and murder at the hands of indigenous flesh eaters into whose territory our would-be global saviors have unwittingly landed. #makethemdieslowly
Storytelling has never been Eli Roth’s strongest suit, but then again, the Italian cannibal classics like Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox, Man from Deep River, and Eaten Alive never prioritized plot and character development over the relentless delivery of gore galore. Outside of a few predictable twists in the narrative once the Amazon section of The Green Inferno kicks into gear, the only thing that matters in Roth’s eyes is subjecting his characterless characters to acts of gruesome humiliation and death. In this area, the man performs to expectations quite nicely, and some of these effects-heavy sequences sport a touch or two of dark humor to give the eye gouging and disembowelment some welcome levity sure to please horror fans.
Try though he may to replicate the gut-munching bloodbaths of Deodato and Lenzi, Roth can’t quite elevate his film to the same depraved heights of his predecessors in the genre. I’m not saying that I wish the guy had thrown in some footage of animal slaughter, but there are other things preventing The Green Inferno from truly taking off. The acting is overall serviceable at best, but the cast is sadly lacking in a Giovanni Lombardo Radice or Ivan Rassimov type who could chew the scenery like a fresh plate of chicken cacciatore. Roth’s decision to shoot the film digitally rather than with 35mm film was likely a budgetary call, yet it leaves Inferno deprived of the grimy, gritty texture the movies that inspired it had in abundance. Cannibal Ferox looks way better in high definition than Roth’s film, and that was made almost forty years ago.
My last point of contention with The Green Inferno is that, unfortunately, it lacks the sleaze factor, but I don’t think the blame for that can be laid squarely at Roth’s feet. Truth is, the Italian cannibal flicks were a product of their time - a darker, less desensitized age where their makers were free to give hungry audiences a close-up look at what was once considered the unimaginable. There was also a competitive streak among the directors of those chunk-blowing epics as each strived to top the other’s movie in terms of sex, gore, and insanity. The horror genre has never shied from embracing the shattering of taboos, so in the year 2019, The Green Inferno can’t help but look rather tame and uninspired when compared to the goriest fright films of decades past.
I don’t mean to damn this film with faint praise because it is mostly well-crafted and bloody good fun once the slaughter begins. The digital cinematography is at its strongest when capturing the lush Amazon scenery, and the bountiful screen gore supplied by the special make-up effects wizards Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger is a practical flesh feast of exposed guts and severed limbs overflowing with squeamish delight. But ultimately it gives seasoned horror fans nothing they haven’t seen before. Italian cannibal movies were sick and demented carnival sideshows ready to give a paying public horror beyond their limited imagination for the pleasure of a quick thrill and quicker buck. The Green Inferno feels like a ride at Disney World.
Since The Green Inferno was first released on Blu-ray three years ago, the good folks at Scream Factory probably found it unnecessary to subject the film to a fresh HD scan for their “Collector’s Edition” release. So, we get a transfer that is identical to the one found on the 2016 Universal disc and given the fact that the preexisting master was taken from a digital source with its inherent flaws and virtues, it’s doubtful that any improvement could be made. The transfer is presented in the film’s original 2.40:1 widescreen aspect ratio and in full 1080p resolution. Earlier scenes set in New York are hindered by cinematography that is about as dull and basic as it gets, but the colors, though muted, at least appear accurate. The decision by Roth and his director of photography Antonio Quercia to utilize harsh lighting during the opening moments was a puzzling one as it results in the actors looking anemic and cadaverous. Once the action moves to the Amazon, the lighting manages to balance out and actually benefit the characters and the jungle scenery gifts the viewer with an abundance of vibrant greens and authentic browns, while the blood flows in pleasurable shades of the deepest and darkest reds. Fine detail is clean and crisp, and texture is plentiful when it comes to the clothing, sets, and Amazonian locales.
The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track from the previous Blu-ray has been ported over to Scream’s new release and has been supplemented with a 2.0 stereo option that might be a better listening experience for home viewers with standard television speakers. I found the 5.1 track to be a more than adequate recreation of the original theatrical sound mix as it takes full advantage of the available jungle ambience to stunning effect. The multi-channel activity sounds clear from start to finish and the various elements of the mix work amazingly together to create the perfect audio accompaniment for the film. Dialogue (which mostly involves screaming in bloody terror in the second half) and the musical score never clash or overwhelm each other. Optional English subtitles have also been provided.
In the supplements department, the first Green Inferno Blu-ray only featured a group audio commentary with Roth holding court with producer Nicolas Lopez and actors Lorenza Izzo, Aaron Burns, Daryl Sabara, and Kirby Bliss Blanton and a photo gallery. Scream has retained both those features here and backed it up with enough new and archival bonus material to justify the “Collector’s Edition” tag in the eyes of the film’s fanbase.
First up is “Into The Green Inferno” (50 minutes), an exhaustive new interview with Roth that finds the director recounting the filming of his cannibal opus with insight and candor. His comments are illustrated by clips from the film and behind-the-scenes footage shot by Roth and others. Actors Izzo, Sabara, and Blanton return to offer their recollections of the production in “Uncivilized Behavior: Acting in The Green Inferno” (35 minutes). That’s a combined 95 minutes’ worth of new director and cast interviews, so if you listen to the audio commentary and then watch these featurettes, expect some informational overlap, dear readers.
An extensive assemblage of behind-the-scenes footage (55 minutes) shot on HD video should make Green Inferno lovers very happy. The making-of featurette (16 minutes) gives us a pretty basic overview of the production with soundbite comments from Roth and members of the cast and crew. It was created for promotional purposes as was the three short featurettes that follow: “Lorenza Izzo”, “Meet the Villagers”, and “Amazon Jungle”. Each of them runs roughly a minute each and won’t give you much more than a few brief soundbites, some on-set footage, and a clip or two from the film.
The original theatrical trailer (2 minutes), a selection of television spots (2 minutes), and five still galleries (Movie, Behind the Scenes, Village Construction, Storyboards and Make-up Tests, and Publicity) round out the disc-based supplements. As far as the galleries go, I couldn’t tell you if they were expanded from what was found on the first Blu-ray, but the images are plentiful. The second disc of this release is a CD featuring the score composed by Manuel Riveiro. There are 28 tracks in all, and Scream has helpfully included a track listing insert sheet. Finally, we have a reversible cover sleet featuring the original movie poster design and new artwork commissioned for this release.
Having seen my share of Italian cannibal horror flicks, I wasn’t all that impressed by The Green Inferno, but I can’t deny that Eli Roth made a fairly effective entry in the genre that packs in more than enough flesh-ripping gore and intimidating jungle atmosphere to compensate for the lack of characterization and a hopelessly muddled socio-political subtext. Regardless of my feelings, hardcore fans of the director and gruesome modern horror can chuck those earlier Universal Blu-rays because Scream’s new Collector’s Edition certainly earns that title by wisely refraining from improving on an HD transfer that wasn’t worth the time and effort and supplying a few hours’ worth of bonus material. If you love The Green Inferno, this release comes highly recommended.
