NOTE: This review was written after the 2013 AFI Fest screening and originally published by KillerFilm.com.  
 
I’m not a fan of Eli Roth as either a filmmaker or an actor. I don’t understand how he became a brand in horror considering he has yet to make a good feature, let alone a great one. I do however admire that he has used his clout to produce features like THE LAST EXORCISM and THE SACRAMENT. So I wasn’t excited about THE GREEN INFERNO, but the opportunity to see it for free essentially at its premiere at a midnight AFI Fest screening including a Q&A with Roth and the cast was appealing and sounded like a fun night. And it was. The audience even included Quentin Tarantino, Marilyn Manson and John Gulager. Roth gave an entertaining introduction to the picture and explained that it was inspired by cult classic cannibal pictures including CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST.

Once THE GREEN INFERNO began, it appeared reminiscent more of after school specials than anything else. That is not a compliment to the writing, acting, directing or cinematography. And this is basically true of the first half of the picture. The writing is lazy, the acting is poor and there is nothing cinematic about the photography. While there is a main character that is given some rudimentary character work, it’s very much an ensemble picture and no care or craft has been used to introduce these characters and give them distinct identities. They’re not even archetypes. They all sound basically the same and have little to no personality. Were the actors better, maybe some of them would stand out, but they don’t. And this seems to be true of Roth’s work in general.  He’s very interested in the horror elements of his pictures, but he never seems to care about the first half of the picture where he’s introducing and developing his cast of characters.

In the Q&A after the picture, Roth explained how both Quentin Tarantino and Diablo Cody motivated him to write and make his cannibal movie. Sadly, none of their storytelling skills have rubbed off on Roth. You would think that with all of the time Roth has spent with Tarantino both on and off set that he might learn something about storytelling, dialogue, character development, but none of that is on display here.

There are a few laughs here and there in the first half of the picture, though most of it is disappointing and you have to get through all that to get to the real highlights of the picture. The airplane sequence about halfway through is very well done. It’s visceral and intense. Had I cared about any of the characters, it would have been even better. But it’s solid and thrusts us and the characters into very dangerous territory.

When the characters arrive at the native village, things get very creepy and the true horror begins. Because the characters are such blanks, your mind may wander like I did and you may put yourself in that situation and wonder what you would do. Would you try to escape, fight, take your own life, kill your friend who is begging for you to put him/her out of their misery? It is a truly horrifying situation with no easy answers.  

And when the violence begins, it is incredibly disturbing and as graphic as anything I have ever seen. Yes, you expect graphic horror in a cannibal picture, but nothing can prepare you for this. It’s a showstopper. And it sets the tone for the rest of the picture.

THE GREEN INFERNO works reasonably well from this point on and I don’t want to spoil anything. Again, had we truly cared about these characters, it would be so more effective. At the end of the day, a horror movie works because we have a stake in the characters. We either root for the characters to survive whatever horror they have been thrust into or we cheer on the colorful villain to kill them all. But for me, I was simply ambivalent while watching THE GREEN INFERNO. I didn’t want the natives to butcher and eat the characters, nor did I care if any of the characters survived.

Hardcore horror fans will probably love the second half of THE GREEN INFERNO, especially some of the amazing practical effects by KNB. But I really hope that Eli Roth digs deeper and puts more effort into the writing and more care into the acting of his next picture and makes something that stands out as a great picture in the horror genre. Roth is a passionate fan and filmmaker and I would love to see that passion on screen in a much more balanced way.