The Green Inferno tries to leave viewers with a moral lesson, but when subjected to any kind of scrutiny, that lesson is entirely ridiculous. In the 1980s, Italian horror was a booming business, with directors like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Lamberto Bava creating classic after classic. One thing Italian horror had over most of the films produced in America at the time was a willingness to get as sleazy and raw as possible, hitting viewers with extremely graphic gore, rampant nudity, and just general craziness.
Like American horror, Italian horror also had specific sub-genres that proved popular in the 1980s, and perhaps the most infamous was the cannibal film. Often set within the jungle, these films saw western characters somehow end up on the menu for remote tribes that weren't used to outsiders, and were all to happy to punish trespassing or other more serious offenses with death and consumption. Of course, this is one sub-genre that rarely gets explored nowadays, as the setup is ripe for racially insensitive or offensive depictions of indigenous peoples.
Of the many films that comprised the 1980s Italian cannibal movie boom, the most famous is Cannibal Holocaust, which came out right at the start of the decade. In that film, characters head into the jungle to make a documentary called The Green Inferno. Thus, noted horror fan Eli Roth used that title for his 2015 tribute to the sub-genre. The resulting film has a lot of positives, but its ending, especially its apparent message, leaves much to be desired.
The Green Inferno sees a group of college activists head into the Amazon jungle to stage a protest against a petrochemical company operation that's destroying forests and displacing native tribes that have lived without contact with the outside world. On the flight back, their plane malfunctions and crashes, and the survivors are captured by one of the very tribes they sought to defend. Unfortunately, this tribe is full of cannibals who proceed to brutally kill and eat most of the group. Eli Roth shows the deaths in excruciating detail, and as a horror piece The Green Inferno mostly succeeds when it comes to shocking and scaring the audience.
Near the end, lead character Justine (Lorenza Izzo), manages to escape the tribe, and ends up in the middle of a huge battle between the petrochemical company's militia force and the cannibalistic natives. She's able to identify herself as an American to one of the militia men, and heads back to the states. Here's where things get stupid. Back in New York City, Justine lies and says that she was the only survivor of the plane crash, and that the natives helped her to safety, before being unfairly wiped out by the militia. This follows multiple shots of the battle between the company and the tribe that seems to want to make the viewer sympathetic to the cannibals. Which had of course just butchered and eaten multiple people that had done absolutely nothing more wrong than be in the jungle.
The message appears to be that the native tribes were in the right to do what they did, due to their way of life being intruded upon. It also seems to go a step further and argue that they're more moral than selfish civilized society, whether that be the ill-informed activists or the petrochemical mercenaries. Of course, this is glossing over the fact that this tribe EATS PEOPLE, and not only that, eats people who've done them no wrong, and also dismembers them while they're alive and screaming.
Nobody in The Green Inferno murdered or raped the natives like in Cannibal Holocaust, thus arguably deserving their fates. Justine deciding to protect the tribe and paint them as nice is wildly irresponsible, as the next people who encounter these supposedly benevolent natives will be in for a rude awakening. It also dishonors the memory of the people that were killed. Say what one will about respecting the rights of remote tribes to remain undisturbed, but painting these cannibals as morally superior to civilization is laughably dumb.
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