By Peter Skrzypczak, Film Critic.
Spoiler alert: I don’t care for his movies so I don’t care to spoil them.
Cathartic: providing psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions; causing catharsis.
Violence–and its aftermath–when portrayed on film has always been defended as being cathartic. I’m not here to dispute that. What I am here to say is that as time goes by messages derived from violence is being diminished with the likes of genres such as Roth’s “torture porn.”
Catharsis in the visual sense (particularly with horror) is the buildup of tension followed by a quick and sudden release. In your typical horror movie, for example, there’s a sleazy young lady running from whatever masked horror stalks her. With every narrow escape the tension is heightened until suddenly it is released through that stupid jump scare which ends up just being that asshole friend–or, she’s killed in some gruesome manner.
Oh, man that’s never been before. What innovative and and thought provoking messages being beamed to me!
Now I’m not saying these films should be banned for their violence–That’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t care about violence in film. Much like CGI, it is all about how you use it, and Eli Roth does not use it well.
Watch the “Evil Dead” series; They start as horror flicks, but as it goes on it evolves into unabashed fun. Roth thinks he’s commentating on culture with his films. “Green Inferno,” one of his latest films, is about a group of ill-advised college kids going to the Amazon to protest cutting down the rainforest… only to be captured by a tribe of cannibals. Oh, like “Cannibal Holocaust?” ‘Cause that was a good movie (Spoiler alert: It’s not). Back to the point though, Roth’s vision with this film is supposed to be a look at naive “social justice warriors” and their greater lack of understanding.
How utterly asinine of him to take that stance when the tribe he depicts is completely fictionalized to be villainous. There are indigenous cannibalistic tribes out there–not that it would be any better to depict them.
Maybe do a movie solely about cannibalism? Cannibalism is wrong for a plethora of reasons, but you could do a winding descent into madness with each human eaten, something akin to the tales of the Wendigo. At least then you could have some psychological aspect thrown in.
Now I understand not every movie needs to be have tons of depth and sometimes you just want mindless fun, but the problem with Roth’s films are that from his view they aren’t always mindless, even though they play on the base fears of mutilation and helplessness.
For comparison let’s look at “Alien” solely on the xenophobia aspect. “Alien” hits the mark by placing xenophobic themes into its antagonist, the Xenomorph. With this, the film takes a broader look at the thesis by looking outward to the stars, pondering not just about if we are alone, but what potential horrors may wait in the vast void of space.
“Green Inferno” is narrowed to Earth where it is, for the most part, based in reality. The movie paints an awful image for indigenous people, and thankfully those people will never see this film. However, the bigger issue is the image it paints to the general public about these people: “You should be scared they’ll eat you!”… “Be xenophobic of anything outside your country!”… “You’ll die (gruesomely) if you ever leave America!”
Bottom line: Roth’s films are all meat, and no bones.
