For a long time I was scared to watch really gory movies, but now that Netflix and their screwdriver lobotomies have desensitized all of us to gore I decided to watch The Green Inferno, director Eli Roth’s 2013 take on the Italian cannibal exploitation films of the 70’s and 80’s. It garnered attention in the media for shooting on location in the jungles of Peru, casting members of a remote tribe who had never seen movies before, its controversial plot, and making people in theatres faint.
The film’s plot begins when the protagonist Justine is horrified by a university lecture on female
genital mutilation. She promptly meets with her dad, a United Nations lawyer, to ask if there’s anything he can do to stop it. He informs her that it’s beyond his sphere of influence, so she turns to a group of activists on campus looking for a way to make a difference. Despite encountering friction with the group’s members when Justine attends her first meeting, she agrees to join them on a trip to Peru to stop a logging company from threatening the habitat of an indigenous tribe.
They successfully stop the deforestation, but they’re captured by police and sent on a flight
home after bribing an official. Their plane suffers an engine failure in the air, and they crash into the jungle where they’re taken in by a tribe of cannibal headhunters. The rest of film involves the survivors trying to escape, with numerous gruesome fates met along the way.
This premise alone generated controversy before the film was even released. Various
organizations denounced Green Inferno for perpetuating harmful longstanding notions that
uncontacted indigenous tribes are “savages” and “cannibals,” something that real-world activists argued could reinforce the Peruvian state’s policies to forcefully integrate tribes.
Roth then issued a statement of his own, arguing that a movie about a fictional tribe isn’t going to embolden the deforestation and threats that tribes are already facing. These threats, he argued, are the result of greedy corporations, not depictions in movies. He then goes on to say that the movie is meant to be a critique of slacktivism, or bandwagon activism.
Since this film aired I think we’ve all witnessed an event that’s helped us understand Roth’s
point of view: the failed missionary attempt of John Allen Chau. In 2018 Chau, an American,
attempted to bring Christianity to the uncontacted tribe living on North Sentinel island. Upon attempting to touch down on the island, Chau was immediately shot with arrows before he could spread harmful contagions from the outside world to the tribe. In the aftermath of this incident, public opinion wasn’t against the tribe for shooting him, it was against Chau for being ignorant to the point of endangering an entire island.
This same mentality of ignorant activism is reflected by the “activists” in Green Inferno. Early in the movie we’re shown the flawed nature of their activism when they cite going to foreign
communities and shaming locals as an effective tactic. As the movie progresses we learn that, as Roth said in his statement, the kids care, they just care more about getting recognized for caring. Green Inferno’s message is probably more relevant now than it was in 2013, particularly in the current climate. It contains commentary about what happens when activism collides with social media’s need for validation, and what happens when activism fails to include the people it claims to be trying to help. This message is then delivered by a gripping, faint-inducing story that captures the over-the-top horror style of classic grindhouse cinema.
Comments