This movie caused quite a stir when it came out. Eli Roth making his own tribute to the Cannibal horror flicks of the 70s and 80s like Cannibal Holocaust? It was destined to make waves. Like any movie that Eli Roth is involved with, it was accused of being juvenile and a pale copy of the movies that came before it, but I wanted to give it a chance anyway. I waited awhile before I finally decided to check it out, but today's the day! Let's see what I think of this movie! Yay cannibals!
This movie is about a group of college student activists who travel to the Amazon in order to save the rainforests from a petrochemical company that is clearing out the rainforests. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned and the activists wind up stranded in the rainforest and at the mercy of some not-so-friendly locals. See, THIS is why you don't take trips into the Amazon with sketchy college activist groups. Who approved this trip?
I don't want to be a killjoy, but I used to belong to a campus group, and the amount of supervision and permissions we had to get just to take a trip to Lansing, which is the capitol city of the same state we live in, was ridiculous, so I can assure you that there's NO WAY the trip in this movie would have been able to take place. It just wouldn't have happened, period. Leaving that aside and understanding that we're not even nearly within the realm of reality here, let's examine this movie as the total fantasy that it is, shall we? I see reviews mentioning that there's no way this trip would happen in real life, and I get it, that was my first thought too, but sometimes movies are just pretend, and we can live with that, yes? I mean, the original Cannibal Holocaust at least paid lip service to credibility with its plot, but like I said, this movie is WAY out there in the land of make-believe, so I gave up pretty soon on expecting anything realistic to happen, and understanding that none of this is even remotely real, I still found a lot to enjoy in this movie.
The acting here is actually pretty strong. Lorenza Izzo does a good job as Justine, an idealistic college student whose father is a United Nations attorney. She grew up in relatively privaleged circumstances, but she wants to give back and honestly wants to make a difference in this world, so she joins a group led by Alejandro, played by Ariel Levy, in his smarmiest glory. He really does a good job with his role, though I hated him from the start (I'm an excellent judge of character). There's plenty of gore and we even get to know some of the chracters before they become cannibal chow, so I actually cared about some of the deaths, though it's pretty easy to guess who's going to die and when. Overall, as long as you're not expecting a masterpiece, this movie is pretty enjoyable. i didn't like the ending, and I thought it was preachy and stupid, but I'm coming to expect that from Eli roth (I felt the same way about Hostel 2) so it wasn't anything unexpected or anything, and I did enjoy the ride up to the end, so I say you should check this movie out. As long as you're not expecting the pinnicale of cinematic genius or anythinng, you can have some cheesy, gory, nasty fun with this one.
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