The Green Inferno

I usually don’t review slashers. Matthew 7:6 tells us not to cast our pearls before swine. However, I’m making an exception for “The Green Inferno.” The reason is because its premise, cannibalism, is something that has existed throughout history. This film doesn’t make up its own original, customized forms of carnage. Cannibalism is always grisly. Don’t get me wrong, I knew going in that this movie would exploit that. I had prayed about it a lot. But because the premise is legitimate, I decided not to dismiss this movie without discussing it in comparison to things that really happen.

Before the montage of nauseating sadism begins, there is some plot. Justine, a college student, joins a team on a mission to document a tribe in the Amazon, with the hopes of protecting them from people who want to destroy their homes. Their plane crashes, and they land in the middle of that tribe. Let the torture begin.

Okay, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about one thing: this movie is beyond extremely offensive. This is one of those movies that I wish could have a moral rating all its own. And I’m not gonna lie, I averted my eyes a lot while watching this. I squinted, I held up my hands, sometimes I even closed my eyes. But I saw enough. And what I saw was enough for me to write this review. Imagine a movie about the Holocaust that accurately depicted Hitler’s torture of the Jews, but just showed it exclusively for an hour before an abrupt, unresolved ending. A movie like that would be offensive, not because it contained violence, but because of how it dealt with the violence. Well, “The Green Inferno” is even worse than that. It does not make the bad guys look good; rather, it revels in their evil! It’s shamelessly evil, and it’s proud of it!

When I applied to review this film, Christian Answers sent me some fascinating information in their response. One of these facts was that there are no longer any known cannibals in the Amazon. That shows that Eli Roth didn’t really care about honestly portraying world tragedies. Even worse, he actually asked Peruvian natives to be extras in the film. They didn’t know what a movie was, so he showed them the similar film “Cannibal Holocaust,” and they thought it was a comedy.

When reviewers write for Christian Answers, one star is the lowest we can give for moviemaking quality. I’ll give this one half a star more because of some fair acting, fitting music, clever tribal costumes, and impressive landscapes. But these things are smothered by the exploitative silliness. Oh, and I suppose I can’t leave out that the gore is done very realistically. Yeah, the gore is pretty much the only thing that was given any legitimate effort. Just because the gore is convincing won’t raise the moviemaking quality, even regardless of morality, because there’s nothing intelligent about it. This film is actually more desensitizing than disturbing, because it’s hard to take it seriously. Other than the gore, everything about it is lazy. Many of the sets look like trash, the script relies on profanity, I couldn’t sympathize with any of the characters, and the only scene that was lightly gripping was an escape attempt.

The movie does take a few breaks from the gruesomeness. These breaks are filled with profane dialog. There are around 30 F-words. I counted 5 S-words, 2 B-words, one misuse of God’s name, and one use of “gay” and “whore” as insults.

In a lecture, a professor talks about female genital mutilation. A man’s genitals are partially shown while he urinates in the forest. The tribe has minimal clothing—exposing hiny cheeks—but the people are usually painted from head to toe. Later, much skin is exposed when some girls” genitals are mutilated, but this scene shows no nudity. Two girls kiss. A man masturbates while clothed. Breasts can be seen briefly while a girl is prepared for sacrifice.

I’ve already said and reiterated that the violence is gratuitous in almost every sense of the word. The following paragraph should only be read by mature readers who still need convincing. The plane crash is over the top, showing a man’s decapitated neck; another man’s head is slashed by the propellers. Some old, fleshy corpses can be seen in the village. These things are barely worth mentioning compared to what follows. A man’s eyes and tongue are cut out; then he is dismembered—all while he’s alive. Not only does the camera not cut away, but it in fact shows it all very close up. After his head is cut off last, he is seasoned and cooked. The tribe children laugh when a captive has diarrhea, which is surprisingly not shown onscreen. Girls” facial expressions are shown during genital mutilation, which is offscreen—I can’t help wondering why. A girl slits her own throat, and blood sprays. Another man is seized by a group and eaten alive like a chicken drumstick.

There are no positive messages in the film, as implied in the tagline—”No good deed goes unpunished.” Some of the team members have some qualities of a role model; they want to prevent the tribal homes from being destroyed, and they work together to save each other when in danger. However, any role model in the main protagonist, Justine, is ruined at the end. Not only does she leave a dislikable crew member to die, but when she survives, she reports that the tribe was hospitable and benevolent.

This movie stands a high chance of being the worst film of 2015—maybe the only one that might rival it is “Fifty Shades…” Just the details of the violence alone should be enough to make one question the sanity of everyone who worked on it. But if you won’t take my word for it, as a Christian, I suggest you read some secular reviews. Even most secular reviews of this film were surprisingly harsh, and spoke with a rare moral perspective. For example, here are some adjectives that secular reviews have used to describe it: vile, abhorrent, insulting, hateful, unbelievably sick, depraved, repulsive. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Violence: Extreme / Profanity: Heavy to extreme / Sex/Nudity: Heavy to extreme

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.