Brow Beat

Eli Roth Combines Cannibals and Peruvian Jungles in The Green Inferno

Sky Ferreira is having a bad day in The Green Inferno.

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Eli Roth hasn’t directed a film in seven years. It doesn’t seem too long ago—mostly because, for better or worse, his works tend to scar the viewer permanently—but his last effort at the helm was 2007’s Hostel: Part II. Horror’s favorite son has returned, though, and his latest film, The Green Inferno, released its first trailer today. The premise: a group of student activists travels to Peru to help a dying tribe, crashes in the middle of the Amazon, and is then imprisoned by said tribe. Even more unfortunately, the tribe happens to be comprised entirely of cannibals.

Blood and guts probably follow, but the trailer mostly sets the scene and asks the obvious questions (“You know what this is? You know what they’re doing to us?”). The film is clearly a homage to 70’s grindhouse flicks like Cannibal Holocaust, but Roth is also on record as wanting the movie to look like the works of Terrence Malick and Werner Herzog. He seems to have succeeded: the verdant and exotic shots we get in the trailer bring to mind the dense climes of Aguirre, The Wrath of God and The New World. To get that middle-of-the-jungle feel, Roth took the cast—which includes Sky Ferreira—into the heart of the Amazon and filmed the movie with a previously uncontacted tribe that had never before seen a movie. The Green Inferno will be obviously be a tad different from Herzog and Malick films, and Roth’s brand of torture-porn is not for everyone, but he can always be relied upon to deliver a transporting and terrifying film experience. Save your screams for September 5, when the film hits theaters.