Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

The Green Inferno Blu-ray Movie Review

#SaveTheCannibals

Reviewed by Martin Liebman January 2, 2016

Eli Roth loves him some blood and guts.  The man behind the camera for the fan favorite Cabin Fever (full disclosure: a film this reviewer has not seen) and the torture porn penthouse Hostel films (full disclosure: two films this reviewer wishes he could forget) and the man who starred in the grisly earthquake film Aftershock (full disclosure: a film this reviewer had forgotten) is back to take a stab at the 1970s-inspired Cannibal genre in The Green Inferno, a picture that lacks the grit of the movies that defined the genre's heyday and instead aims to simply kill off a bunch of unlikeable characters in deplorable fashion. The movie's sole purpose appears to be the depiction of the human body's grisly mutilation; everything else is either set-up for the gore or interludes between the gore. Gore hounds will love it but will probably want to fast-forward through the opening forty minutes which amount to nothing more than blandly conceived bleeding heart activism fluff (though that's an interesting metaphor when the tables are turned), much like Roth's Hostel wasted plenty time before getting to the "good" stuff.

Dinner.

College freshman Justine (Lorenza Izzo) finds herself drawn to an activism group after she speaks up for human rights in class. She's invited to a meeting by the affable Jonah (Aaron Burns) by way of the mysteriously handsome Alejandro (Ariel Levy), the group's leader. Justine gets off on the wrong foot but eventually works her way into the group's good graces and becomes part of a plan to actively protest a company's destruction of native Peruvian lands in a search for natural gas. Their plan: don disguises, enter camp, chain themselves to trees and equipment, and wirelessly transmit what happens over the Internet. Her group's plan succeeds, but their return trip home turns into chaos when the plane crashes and the survivors are taken prisoner by a group of cannibalistic natives.

Love him or hate him, one must at least credit Eli Roth for having the guts (literally, as the case may be) for going hard, and going all the way, in his movies. He leaves no surface anything but saturated in blood, no human internal part left unseen, no act of violence left to the imagination. But his films often fail to balance story with the epic blood spilling, and The Green Inferno is no exception. The picture's opening half accomplishes nothing more than drawing out the reason for the activists to be in Peru. There's very little honest or thorough character setup, though in the film's defense the genre leaves little room for such trivialities. Whether they live or die is really of no concern; they're almost literally meat for the grinder, though again in the film's defense families probably won't be sitting down to watch the movie in an effort to learn how they, too, can #SaveTheRainforest or whatever. This is straight modern schlock that does its thing well, presuming home viewers know how to use the fast-forward button.

Roth's cast does what it can with the film's collection of obnoxious characters. Dry, monotone performances dominate the earliest parts of the film -- Justine's roommate and "Female Genital Mutilation" professor are particulalry terrible -- but there's a mildly more organic vibe to the collected victims, er, activists. Camaraderie feels forced and their dedication to their cause manufactured, but then again they're not starring in a real-life webumentary or fighting their cause from the heart. They exist to scream, get bloodied, and get dissected. That they bring anything to the roles at all is a minor miracle, and that audiences can even crack a smile at some of the jokes is a help. As for Roth's direction, it's decent enough. He does a fair job capturing the surrounding beauty of the Peruvian jungle before things get out of control, but his pre-cannibalism sequences feel rather forced and inorganic, mostly because they are, because that's Roth out of his element, doing the necessary legwork to get the movie to what he knows best: gore.

The Green Inferno Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Green Inferno's smooth digital photography betrays the gritty visceral essence that would otherwise help the picture's bleak and violent tone, only seeming to reinforce the idea that Roth's film is more about what it can show than any kind of story it can tell, world it can create, or feel it can elicit. That said, the digital photography is well defined on Blu-ray. The 1080p presentation shows off plenty of striking colors, generally by way of rich jungle greens, but bright neon green jump suits, gushing red blood and maroons on mangled bodies, and other bits of colorful flair on clothes and city backgrounds are very satisfying and bold. Details are tight. Intimate facial features -- whether the students or the more heavily made up natives -- are precise. Leafy jungle details are insanely sharp and tactile. Mangled flesh is gooey and heavily textured. A few smeary edges creep up, as do slightly purple blacks and examples of light macroblocking and noise, but the image is otherwise well defined and precise.

The Green Inferno Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Green Inferno arrives on Blu-ray with a solidly performing DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The film opens with wide-berth jungle ambience that increases in aggression and immersion. Heavy machinery sounds that follow are more loud than they are refined, but the effect works well enough. Music is pleasantly spaced and richly detailed, whether percussion-heavy drum beats or more traditional notes. The college campus segments present a nice bit of surrounding atmospherics, and the jungle sections are likewise alive and sonically detailed. Cannibal crowd chants during feasts and squishy sounds of slicing flesh are presented with great detail. Dialogue delivery is generally fine, through a few occasions arise when it's a bit muffled under surrounding elements.

The Green Inferno Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Green Inferno contains only a photo gallery (1080p) of over 200 images and an audio commentary track with Co-Writer/Director/Producer Eli Roth, Producer Nicolás López, and Stars Lorenza Izzo, Aaron Burns, Kirby Bliss Blanton, and Daryl Sabara. An iTunes/UV digital copy code is included with purchase.

The Green Inferno Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cannibal films are a staple of the gritty underground Horror scene, and they are by their very nature some of the most notoriously grisly on the market, a genre which seems like a perfect match for a filmmaker of Roth's style and strengths. In The Green Inferno, Roth simply puts his own stamp on the genre, which in this case means amping up the slick production values as opposed to the genre's lower budget, schlocky roots; turning the stomach-churning factor up to 11 from 10; and turning down the story quotient from nothing to negative one. Featuring plenty of gore mixed in with even more worthless setup and annoying characters, the movie should please gore aficionados looking for another movie in which limbs are severed, eyeballs are devoured, and bodies are turned inside out. Everyone else should stay far, far away. Universal's Blu-ray release of The Green Inferno features strong video and audio. Supplements include a massive photo gallery and an audio commentary. All but the most iron-stomached audiences should proceed with caution.