The Green Inferno -2013- -
The final act introduces a darkly comedic twist: Justine discovers that the tribe’s entire food supply is laced with the wrecked plane’s fuel. She sets a portion of the village ablaze. Roth deliberately makes the audience cheer for the destruction of a culture—a moral gray area that separates The Green Inferno from simpler slasher films.
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For collectors, the Blu-ray release from Universal features a "Gore Cut" (unrated) that restores the razor-blade scene, as well as a feature-length documentary titled The Making of The Green Inferno which details the hellish Amazon shoot. The Green Inferno -2013-
The film’s protagonist, Justine (Lorenza Izzo), joins a group of New York college activists to stop a corporation from destroying an Amazonian tribe’s land. Their methods? Social media stunts, performative protests, and a self-congratulatory sense of moral superiority. Roth deliberately makes them insufferable—they debate veganism while flying first class to Peru, and their leader Alejandro (Ariel Levy) is a caricature of radical chic.
The real horror isn’t the tribe’s cannibalism—it’s the activists’ shock when the tribe doesn’t recognize their “good intentions.” The tribe doesn’t care about their hashtags or their guilt. When the plane crashes, the activists become meat. Roth inverts the colonial narrative: the “savages” are actually logical (they consume enemies to absorb power), while the “civilized” are hysterical, entitled, and inept. The final act introduces a darkly comedic twist:
The Cannes Walkout: When the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), reports circulated about people fainting and vomiting. While some of this is standard horror marketing, the film is genuinely intense.
Critical Split:
Release Delay: The film was produced in 2013 but wasn't released wide until 2015 due to financial troubles at the original distribution company (Open Road Films) and disputes over the marketing budget.
When audiences think of the "torture porn" boom of the mid-2000s, Eli Roth’s name sits near the top of the list. With Hostel (2005) and its sequel, Roth redefined American horror for the post-9/11 era—gritty, realistic, and relentlessly cruel. But for nearly a decade, Roth had been nurturing a different kind of nightmare: a return to the gritty, documentary-style shockers of the late 1970s and early 1980s. For collectors, the Blu-ray release from Universal features
That passion project finally materialized in The Green Inferno -2013-. Released initially at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013 (before a delayed theatrical run in 2015 due to distribution issues), the film is Roth’s love letter—and modern update—to the infamous Italian "cannibal boom" subgenre, most notably Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1980).
Here is everything you need to know about the production, plot, controversy, and lasting legacy of The Green Inferno -2013- .