The Green Inferno Review

Before jumping into a review itself, I want to address the history that led up to this movie. The Green Inferno was directed by Eli Roth and was intended for a release in 2013 upon its actual completion. However, it was pushed back not one but two years later. I was a bit confused since a very small part of me wanted to see it, then I completed forgot about it. I thought maybe it was to gory or hardcore for a release. But then again, Human Centipede 3 is aloud to see the light of day, so why not this?
The Green Inferno is Eli Roth's tribute to the older film from the eighties, Cannibal Holocaust (which from what I remember wasn't actually a jewel itself). Why would anyone want to pay homage to Cannibal Holocaust anyway? It was one of the most realistic and shocking movies of its time. Filmed in a documentary format with extreme practical gore effects, it was taken into investigation for being a snuff film. In fact, the director actually made the actors sign a contract to "disappear" for a year to make the film seem real. His innocence was proven when they appeared in the courtroom. Cannibal Holocaust is one of those films that tries a bit too hard to shock the viewers, incorporating massive amounts of gore, torture, and even rape of all things. Now, I like gore since it adds to the realism of horror and all around looks cool when done right, but rape doesn't sit well with me as I'm sure it doesn't with most people. It's a sign that the movie is trying too hard to shock the audience. Thankfully, The Green Inferno doesn't have any scenes of the sort.
This is Eli Roth we're talking about, the guy who discovered his passion for movies by vomiting during the chest bursting scene from Alien. He has since began making disgusting films like Hostel and Hostel 2, Green Inferno is no exception. The setting is once again with a cannibal tribe in the amazon like Cannibal Holocaust. This time the victims are college teens on a philanthropy trip rather then nature show staff. Their plane crashes in the jungle on the return trip and they fall into the clutches of a cannibal tribe. The tribe is in danger of losing their land to a logging company and think that the students are part of that organization. I like that, giving the antagonist(s) reasonable motives. It's like Jason from Friday the 13th, having witnessed his mother's death by the hands of a camp councilor. The rest of the movie is basically a torture porn(that's actually a real genre). We have it all; dismemberment, cannibalism, slow methods of killing, all done in front of the camera with no cutting away. In the end, the cliché of the sole female survivor escapes with her life with the help of a tribe member who feels for her(a child), kind of like The Hills Have Eyes.
In short, there's a line drawn between shock and fear. Fear is what the horror genre has been striking at for years. Audiences feel it when suspense is built up towards a jump scare and when a monster is revealed. Shock purely comes from images, presented in either books or films. Both need each other to function properly. A movie that does this right is Hatchet; the monster/killer is scary looking and the gory ways he kills both add up to a shocking and terrifying result. The Green Inferno only offers shock...and that's really about it. But the good thing about it, is that it doesn't try too hard to bring as much gore to screen as possible.