Having deterred Americans from exploring either their own country or Europe, via Cabin Fever and the Hostel films, Eli Roth continues his war against tourism in South America, with a gore-stuffed horror owing much to Ruggero Deodato’s infamous Cannibal Holocaust, for better or worse. If that’s a spoiler alert, it’s better you know now what you’re walking into, or more likely out of. On the tasting menu are a band of privileged student activists, who travel from New York to Peru for a direct-action mission against rainforest destruction. But a plane crash (spectacularly staged) lands them among the native tribes they’re out to protect – who don’t exactly welcome them with open arms.
The decision to depict these brown-skinned indigenous people as not just avid flesh-eaters but leering, body-painted, nose-pierced, scary primitives is highly questionable, if not objectionable. Indigenous peoples’ groups have, indeed, objected – especially as there are no actual cannibal tribes in South America. But Roth at least does this consciously. And as with Cannibal Holocaust, the real target is the entitled foreign do-gooders, whose intervention, the film suggests, is really a modern form of imperialism, fuelled by a similar sense of moral superiority and vanity, rather than genuine altruism. They’re excited to be retweeted by CNN, for example, and relieved when the tribe eats the fattest of them first, reasoning he’ll keep them full for days.
Unfortunately, that satirical streak gets overwhelmed by Roth’s evident enthusiasm for staging every round of this cannibal bake-off in eye-gouging, torso-stripping, endurance-testing detail, until only the fate of our final girl (Lorenza Izzo, who’s rather good) remains to be settled. Even slacktivist sashimi loses its flavour. Then again, since when were horror films supposed to be polite? The Green Inferno will be gleefully offensive and unpalatable to mainstream audiences, who may be more similar to The Green Inferno’s victims than they’d like to think. No one could accuse Roth of lacking guts – even if he hasn’t found the perfect recipe for them.
• The Green Inferno is released in the US on 25 September.
