The Green Inferno (2015)

Green Inferno is Eli Roth's recent film, a throwback to the old cannibal/gore-splatter flicks of the 70s and also a “social commentary” on how kids act today, which is totally something he should never be entrusted with. It's like letting a kid handle a firearm. Just nothing but bad things can happen.

Director: Eli Roth

Starring: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This is also a sort of homage to old 70s exploitation/gore flicks like Cannibal Holocaust, which I haven't seen. But that movie was famous for the fact that the filmmakers killed live animals on screen. This is sort of comparable. What Roth does here is kill dignity and good taste in filmmaking on screen, so it's sort of the same.

We start off this movie with a bunch of kids at college protesting in, I guess, the one spot on campus they're allowed to do that – right outside the dorm room of main character Justine. She and her roommate talk about how Justine wants to go join this activist group, how she is attracted to the main guy leading the group, Alejandro, and, a few scenes later, how she wants to go raise awareness of female genital mutilation after learning about it in class.

Her roommate, played by pop star Sky Ferreira, being the only smart kid in the movie, rightfully says the activist group is a bunch of phonies looking for attention, the activist guy is a weirdo and it'd be almost impossible to get anything done by just flying to places by herself with this group and trying basically on-the-fly, sensational type shit. But Justine, being an idealistic social-justice-obsessed college kid, ends up joining the group and going on a mission to stop this rainforest jungle area from being bulldozed.

Ferreira: "It's not too late to get out of the movie like me. You won't see me again for most of it!"

This is Roth's attempt at social commentary – college kids are dumb and don't really care about the issues they pretend to care about! They're just like babies going through phases. Which is pretty condescending and awful, really. I bet Roth hasn't talked to a college kid except for trying to sleazily hit on the 21 year old bartender after a movie premiere and she turns him down. I imagine he then gets very self righteous with her and makes HER feel like the bad guy. I mean he's basically right on the edge of being a red-pill MRA fuckwad in this movie anyway with how douchey and arrogant his message is in this.

Honestly, it just goes on like this for a while... this Alejandro guy talks up Justine about going to save that rainforest and all that, saying that the only way to get people to change their behavior is to put cameras on them, humiliating them. Uh, not sure it's that simple, but okay, I get that Roth can't really process more complex ideas.

Amazingly, they actually somehow get a plane out there. There are a bunch of boring, time-wasting scenes of them eating lunch and then using the bathroom in the woods. I don't know why these scenes were included as they really accomplish nothing at all except padding out the runtime! So hooray for that I guess. But if he's under the impression that any of these characters are likable or interesting, well – they're not.

"Hey, I really think this interaction we're having is substantial and totally not just window dressing for the fact that I'll be dead soon."

I guess their plan is to tie themselves to these trees wearing creepy rape masks and refusing to move until the company with the bulldozers totally, for real stops their mission. I'm sure they won't just go back to doing it after these kids leave! Public humiliation trumps EVERYTHING, remember?

Anyway, then for some reason one of the guys puts a gun to Justine's head, because I suppose he really thought he would get away with it... then after everyone else puts their cameras on him, goading him to shoot Justine (what great people!), he stops and lets them all go free.

"Well, this has gone according to plans so far. I feel like I'm definitely helping!"

They then celebrate with drinks and toasts because again, they totally can't just pick up operations again as soon as the kids left. Activism is fun and easy! Why aren't MORE people doing this?!

I guess God really hated what they just did, though, as their plane immediately crashes as they try to leave, and several characters you don't remember the names of die instantly. RIP to whatever the fuck their names were. But unfortunately, most of the main characters survive.

As it happens every time you go into the jungle, they then immediately get kidnapped by a tribe of red-painted Amazonian savages who eat people! Super realistic! I'm just glad Roth has learned from his previous mistakes in movies like Hostel where he offended entire countries by portraying them as cabals for serial killers and evil people. This time, he's turning his bigotry sights on indigenous peoples who will never see the movie. So that's a way to sidestep outrage and be as despicable as he wants! And oh boy does he ever want to be a despicable piece of shit in this movie.

I suppose stereotyping is just faster. Roth is a busy guy.

One of the main selling points of this movie was, apparently, that it made people throw up in the theater while watching it. I guess there are a few gross scenes, but it's hardly anything THAT fucking extreme overall... maybe Roth just poisoned everyone's drinks and food at those showings he said they threw up at.

I mean, this one scene where they hack apart this guy is kind of gross and bloody in an old vintage 70s-gore way. And it sucks for me because I had money that this guy, the fat black guy who is nice to the main character and is actually sympathetic, would survive this horror movie. And now I'm out $20, so THANKS A LOT, ROTH, YOU PIECE OF SHIT.

But then there's no other scene like this in the movie. What happens in the rest of it? Endless scenes of them sitting in a cage bitching at each other? There's one scene where the savages give them some meat to eat and one girl says she's a vegetarian. Oh the hilarity! When will these apt, cutting social satirical scenes from Eli Roth ever lose their timeliness? Aren't college students pieces of shit?

Oh, and also, they find out that the whole 'Amazon save the rainforest' plot they came down for was just a PR stunt so they could film a video, and they didn't actually help the forest at all. Because in Eli Roth land, there's no actual idealism – anything that seems selfless and genuine is really just the opposite, a soulless marketing ploy. Just more of that awesome, pointed social commentary that rings true (if you're a dumb edgy teenager.)

In between all of this, there are several scenes of Justine being groomed, apparently, for genital mutilation – because isn't it ironic that what she was learning about in the beginning is what she's going through for real now?!? Life is just funny like that.

I guess Justine and this one other guy try to escape, which leads to a long ass scene of them running through the woods and what not. But then they get captured again, which made the whole thing pointless I guess. Justine is almost mutilated by these savages, but one random little boy saves her... why? Because the writers wrote themselves into a hole and had no idea how to save their story! Who cares if he has no reason to do it and we never get a real explanation? DEUS EX MACHINA TIME!

But hey, at least Justine gets to cosplay as a sexy version of the Pilsbury Dough Boy...

Which I'm sure is an actual fetish I am not going to look up at all...

Then she leaves Alejandro there to die, as he was a shitty person and deserved it I guess... in a better movie, there may have been some conflict over this, or character development. But in terrible horror movies, it's just hollow meaningless revenge because the audience didn't like the guy either. Even when she gets home, she just lies and says everyone died. I guess she has a dream about him coming back and she's a cannibal now and bites him?

And here we come to the movie's true message - if you're an activist but don't really believe in your cause, you'll end up in a cage in the jungle left to die. So relatable, so timely.

But that doesn't really make sense anyway.

Michelle also pointed out how weird it is that Justine defends the tribe at the end, claiming the cannibals were actually nice to her and protected her. Odd choice, being that it doesn't make a difference – they all get killed in the end, so who is she protecting here? It's like Roth is trying to have this statement about how she wants to stick to the cause even though it's a lie, just so she can feel better about herself or something. Which is just more lameness really.

The movie then has a short end-credits scene where Alejandro's sister calls Justine and says satellite images found Alejandro living out in the jungle himself now, I guess... which is weird that the cameras picked that up and nobody has saved him yet, but who am I to say? It's cute that the movie thinks we give a shit about any of these terrible characters.

There's like one half decent scene of gore in this, and it's early on and there isn't anything else like it again. The characters in this are unlikable and the social commentary attempts are so bad that it's almost satirical – like I really don't know how anyone thought this was clever, the tip of the iceberg being the asinine dialogue that turns every character into a mouthpiece for Roth's message - it's super transparent and shitty writing. The message is a lot of sneering douche-bro condescension at some kind of strawman idea of what college kids and activists are like. Everything is very negative – as if being this cynical is a substitute for actual intelligent discourse. I don't think it is.

Got to love Roth's defense of the movie against those offended by his portrayal of indigenous cultures... you can read the whole thing here, but these are the parts I found funny:

“My film, however, is about bandwagon activism, or "slacktivism," which is people jumping in on social media and retweeting causes they actually know nothing about (something these activists seem ready to do with my film). The whole idea of the kids saving the rainforest only to be eaten by the tribe they saved is a metaphor for how people are shamelessly consumed by their vanity and need for validation on social media. These kids in the movie care, but they care more about getting recognized for caring.

The people who seem to publicly care how these people are portrayed are people who want to be portrayed as caring people.

If everyone stopped their ideas because they were worried about offending people or sparking discussion then there would be no stories to tell. In short, take your cause seriously, but take my film for what it is — a movie.”

I'll translate for you: “My film is a serious thing with a real message and anyone who doesn't like it is part of the problem! But really, it's just a silly movie, why are you taking it so seriously?!”

What a load... this is just a dumb, poorly written film. It's crass and ordinary and doesn't have anything intelligent to say, nor anything of value entertainment-wise. Just awful. Avoid this.

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REVIEW: Parents (1989)

Well, I for one think it’s a great thing we have movies like this. How else could we ever learn what to do if we figure out that our parents are cannibals? This specific, strange and unlikely occurrence is represented in the movie Parents with…well, about as much dignity and artistry as the plot would normally promise…

Director: Bob Balaban

Starring: Randy Quaid's cannibalistic gut

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098068/

We start off with our main characters, Randy Quaid, his wife Mary Beth Hurt and their son Michael, who is such a good actor that he doesn’t even have to act to show us his character’s personality! He just sits there with a blank expression on his face and we get it entirely – his character was dropped on his head when he was younger and now goes about life with a constant monotone and a vacant look in his eyes at all times. You could argue that he’s this way because his parents are so weird, but nah, I think he was just dropped on his head, because I’m an ass like that.

Introducing Bryan Madorsky, who after this movie, would never be taken seriously as an actor again. Poor kid. I think his real life parents are the actual evil ones for letting him STAR in this shit.

Elsewhere, we learn that Randy Quaid can’t act without enunciating every syllable like he’s constipated and Mary Beth Hurt always has super wide eyes and a fake smile on her face. Michael doesn't feel like eating dinner, so they exchange some pretty poor and stilted dialogue and then send him up to bed where he jumps on the bed in slow motion, followed by a dream of everything turning into blood, like a low-rent version of The Shining:

Yeah, I used to have dreams about falling into a sea of blood, too. But I guess I shouldn't be TOO mean about it. I mean, this IS a movie about...well, nah. I should be even meaner about it actually. I'm too nice!

Afterwards, we get a very sensible and logical transition into this, with goofy sitcom music played over it:

Ah hah...."sensible"....riiiiiight...

Yes, that is one of Parents’ main things – trying to be funny by playing silly music in some scenes. That’s about it. Where’s the joke? Did it get eaten by Randy Quaid? You’ll find that many of the so-called humor in this movie is more just odd and makes your eyebrows raise a little bit and go “Huh?” I don’t really think the writer knew anything about how to write comedy. Oh, and just take a look at some of this rivetingly good dialogue the movie seems to think is worth putting in:

MICHAEL: I had a nightmare.

MOM: Oh, Michael...you didn't take your pajamas off again, did you?

MICHAEL: No.

MOM: Seems the only time you have nightmares is when you take your pajamas off. You didn't, did you? You'll eat something, won't you?

MICHAEL (shaking his head): It was a mistake moving here.

(MOM pricks her finger with a knife by accident.)

MOM: Michael, get out of here!

(MICHAEL runs away.)

....Is this even real? I feel like I got sucked into some bizarro world where nothing makes sense; what are they even going for? He doesn't have nightmares unless he sleeps naked? What the hell is this? And then at the end she just randomly shouts at him to leave...what; why?! This makes no sense and it's making my brain melt!

So...yeah. I don't really like this movie so far.

So Michael goes to his new school where the teacher asks him and the other new kid, a girl named Sheila, to tell the class something “new.” Now that’s a weird way to phrase it. What if the kids told the rest of the class something they already knew? Would the teacher send them out of the class in shame? Anyway, the girl tells them how to make a margarita and Michael tells them that they can turn invisible if they cook a black cat in boiling water...yeah, I don't even have enough surprise left to articulate how I feel about this bit; the movie has already desensitized me to any kind of shock or awe. My apologies.

Naturally because both of these two are clearly the weirdest little shits in the entire class, they bond immediately. She tells him that she’s from the moon, where everyone can just do whatever they want, and…maybe she’s just kidding? Maybe it’s true! Or maybe she’s mentally handicapped. The dialogue is delivered in such a way that it’s impossible to tell. In some movies that can be a big help, but here it’s just lazy since it has no relevance to anything else.

At night Michael wakes up and finds his parents…well, just look:

And that's how you give your kid some kind of complex or disorder; good parenting right?!

Yeah, because I’m sure THIS has NEVER happened before now! I know Randy Quaid’s character can’t be bothered to get the rod out of his ass long enough to talk like a normal human being, but still, if you’re going to roll around on the living room floor half naked, you might want to NOT have a kid who could wake up at any moment! Move it to the bedroom like normal people!

So in a scene so cliched that it's almost original again for these kinds of 'screwed up family' movies, we see that Michael's class is asked to draw a picture of their families! When the teacher looks at Michael's drawing later, she finds...

What an awfully drawn and poorly colored picture! Send this kid to some art classes. He really does need help!

And then that night they’re all getting ready to go to dinner, and Michael’s dad for some reason keeps telling him to behave himself, because…yeah…the kid who acts like he’s in a coma, and barely moves unless you direct him, will probably misbehave…is it THAT HARD to write anything good? Tell me. No, seriously, writer Christopher Hawthorne – tell me! Are you surprised that this guy never wrote anything else for the movies again?

At the dinner itself, Michael and Sheila roll around on the bed while she tries to cut his hands off – again, can’t tell how the hell I’m supposed to feel about this scene. Amused? Horrified? What?! And then at the dinner table the father spills a drink on the mother clearly on purpose aaaaand that’s the scene, was it worth your time, audience? I’ll just assume you’re shaking your heads in a disgusted and exasperated manner as I was when I watched this worthless scene.

Every time Mary Beth Hurt smiles in this movie I just want to smack her face off. So...annoying...

Throughout the rest of the movie we get a lot of forced and trite speeches from Randy Quaid as he doesn’t even try to hide that he’s secretly evil. Truly a performance on the same level as any of the great film villains from Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter to Norman Bates in Psycho. Add Randy Quaid in Parents to that list, movie buffs! Truly he deserves it…hahaha, I’m full of shit. Basically the whole movie up to now has featured scenes of the family eating dinner together and young Michael doesn’t want to eat and just ends up going to bed early every time, sensing something wrong with the food that he can’t place his finger on…so what did he do for his whole life up to now? Just never eat? How is he not anorexic by now? I mean, it’s not like the family apparently made any changes to their routine when they moved into their new house! So what’s the deal? I’m so confused right now!

And really, movie, when was there ever a need to see two small children spraying each other with wine while playing in a freezer with their shirts off?

Ugh, there are just some things that you can't even describe how they make you feel. What the hell am I supposed to gain from this? How am I supposed to react to it? "Oh, the cute little kids are taking each others' clothes off and playing in an icebox with a bottle of expensive wine"? What is WRONG with this movie?

The father forbids Michael to see Sheila again and, although they’re together in the very next scene after that, she never shows up again otherwise. So what was the point of her character at all? If you said nothing and that they were just padding out the movie with filler, you win the million dollars!

So Michael then goes to his father’s work place, which of course has no security guards or even anyone else in the entire building to stop him from just walking through the front door willy nilly. He hides under a table, does not discover anything useful, and leaves. After that, Michael finds a severed leg in the basement at his house, because hey, screw hiding the evidence! Just put your half-eaten body parts in an unlocked basement! That’s the smarty-smart way to be a ‘secret’ cannibal! Then his dad is waiting for him in his room:

Gee. I’ve NEVER seen a scene like THIS before, right?!?!

I mean, OK, so they're not identical, but the mood is very similar and you can't deny this is what Parents was thinking of in its little wormy brain...

I mean WOW, what a blatant rip-off! You aren't even trying, are you movie? I guess what I said earlier about it being a low-rent The Shining was more accurate than I thought.

After that shit is over, Michael brings his school psychiatrist home to show her the basement, but the bloody leg is gone now. She looks over by the window and a dead body pops up from somewhere. Instead of being collected and calm like an adult should be when a child is in danger, she lets out the longest and most exaggerated scream I’ve ever heard in a horror movie as we get a very poor camera pan-up to outside the house where the parents are coming home. And no, movie. Ripping off Halloween while playing goofy elevator music isn’t going to make us laugh; it just makes us more annoyed:

You probably would think these were in the exact same scene in the exact same movie, if I wasn't telling you otherwise. It's not like ripping off two of the most iconic horror films of all time would EVER turn any heads, right? But I guess the fact that no one ever saw this piece of shit is an answer good enough.

At dinner Michael tries to beat up his Quaid-dad, but they tie him up and force him to try and eat some of their delicious human meat. He stabs his dad in the chest and then we get an extremely long and drawn out scene of them chasing each other around the house, screaming, bleeding and trying to kill one another. There’s one scene where the dad is about to throw Michael into the fireplace, but the mom stabs him before he can do so – these kinds of scenes could have almost been interesting, which makes it doubly annoying that there are so many goofy and over the top scenes like with the music. It’s like the makers of the movie were just arguing the whole time over whether to make a comedy or a straight horror film; there’s no cohesion at all!

Also on the list of things that would traumatize a kid. This movie should just be called Bob Balaban's Child Traumatizing Adventure.

The movie ends with both parents dead and Michael in the arms of his loving grandparents. The last shot is of him looking at the delicious…meat sandwich they’ve apparently given him, because I guess just meat and bread is all old people eat. And then we get the credit sequence which is trying to imitate an old 1950s sitcom credit sequence, and completely failing at being funny or effective, because again, this movie was about as coherent as a drunken William S. Burroughs writing with his toes.

I guess this could have been a funny ending, but really, you're doing this after the macabre and eerie ending the film had, and the several very disturbing scenes contained within? It's just confusing as to what they were trying to get across. If this thing had just chosen a direction and tried harder to actually stick with the conventions of that style, it could have worked, but unfortunately it was mostly just a big unwatchable, pretentious mess, and I'm glad I'm done watching it now.

So yeah, Parents is complete ass and merits no viewings in your entire life. But it did teach us that you should make REAL DAMN SURE that your parents aren’t cannibals before you have dinner with them! And I think I’m becoming a vegetarian after watching this movie. Seriously. Ugh.

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