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The Green Inferno Blu-ray delivers great video and audio in this fan-pleasing Blu-ray release
A group of student activists travel from New York City to the Amazon to save a dying tribe but crash in the jungle and are taken hostage by the very natives they protected.
For more about The Green Inferno and the The Green Inferno Blu-ray release, see the The Green Inferno Blu-ray Review published by Martin Liebman on January 2, 2016 where this Blu-ray release scored 3.0 out of 5.
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 Hostelfilms (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'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 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 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.
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.
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Blu-ray.com and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment are offering members the opportunity to win a Blu-ray copy of director Eli Roth's The Green Inferno, which stars Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Daryl Sabara, Kirby Bliss Blanton and Magda Apanowicz. The horror film ...
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has announced the Blu-ray release of director Eli Roth's The Green Inferno, which stars Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Daryl Sabara, Kirby Bliss Blanton and Magda Apanowicz. The horror film arrives on Blu-ray on January 5, 2016 ...