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Eli Roth's "The Green Inferno"

Garo

Boy Wonder
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Location
Behind you
TRIGGER WARNING: this thread will discuss a film involving such topics as murder, rape, and cannibalism.

Eli Roth, the director known for such "horror" titles as Cabin Fever and Hostel, is finally back with his new film, The Green Inferno, a horror film inspired by the cult found footage classic/snuff film Cannibal Holocaust.

I generally like Eli Roth as a director - he's very singular and while he's in large part responsible for horror veering into "torture porn" in the mid 2000s, his films always feel distinctly his - nobody else has that dark spirit of utter glee in such violence and gore. But The Green Inferno sounds like it might be a bit too troubling.

Concerns have been raised about the film's depiction of indigenous peoples, apparently depicting them as uncivilized savages who will jump to rape and murder immediately upon encountering outsiders. I think there's some merit to that; it's disingenuous to suggest that native tribes are savage peoples who would just as soon eat you as shake your hand. But honestly what concerns me more are the semiotic implications of a horror film that uses cannibalism as its primary method of dispatching characters.

Typically horror films are used to moralize; a character uses drugs or has premarital sex, and then they die in some grisly fashion - often killed by a masked serial killer, maybe some supernatural creature, etc. Is it really cool to send the message that somebody doing something not all that bad in retrospect deserves to have their organs eaten away? At least before there's a certain malevolence to the killings - a serial killer's gonna kill and might have some messed up agenda of his own. But a massive tribe of people killing with ostensibly no greater goal, and then eating people's organs away? That's a little more general and seems potentially troubling, morally.

All this to say I'm still gonna be there opening night, because I love horror films and I've missed Eli Roth's unique directorial voice. What about you? Do you care about The Green Inferno? Does the potential for bizarre anti-native sentiment and strange moralizing deter you from seeing it at all?
 

Stitch

AKA Patrick
Joined
Aug 13, 2013
I don't really have a problem with cannibalism in a horror movie, it's not the first time and it surely will not be the last. It's also a fun story device to show just how horrific your villain(s) is and helps to make it difficult to sympathize with the villain(s), which a lot of horror films don't do well enough. Since the point of horror films is to scare audiences, nothing is scarier than the thought of being eaten either before or after you are killed. I'm perfectly fine with innocents being killed in horror movies, since the bad guy is supposed to be shown as a bad guy and not some insane vigilante as you propose. Sure it's fun to give some humanity to the bad guy and add some questions about human nature in, but I think insisting that the bad guy be some sort of moral crusader means you are also saying that killing is somewhat moral.

Let's look back at one of fictions greatest serial killers: Hannibal Lecter. He would often kill and eat those he found rude, those he didn't would have their lives messed up by him because he very well could. There was little moralizing in the books or movies, some of them gaining critical acclaim. Instead there were questions about psychology and if we all had the ability to become a killer and/or cannibal.

On the topic about how this film is using a fake (assumedly) indigenous tribe as its villain is a complicated issue. On one hand the fear of the unknown is a great way to scare audiences and use their fears against them, on the other hand I see how it could confuse people about real indigenous tribes.

I've never been a big fan of "torture porn" movies, so I probably won't go to see it anyway. Although any film that creates discussions such as these probably isn't as harmful as first thought and could rather create more interest in people finding out the truth about indigenous tribes/whatever the discussion is about.
 

Garo

Boy Wonder
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Location
Behind you
I don't know. Something about the potentiality of having a rooting interest in somebody having their organs eaten away makes me feel weird. I don't really know why having a rooting interest in a dumb horror movie supporting character being killed in clever, grisly fashion doesn't feel weird, but wishing that somebody have their organs eaten away does, but it just feels really wrong to me. I'll still see it though, guess I'll find out how uncomfortable it makes me!
 

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