It certainly ain’t much, but based on the few minutes of footage we’ve seen from Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno, it looks like cannibal horror fans will have something fresh to drool over this year.
My only concern is that when compared to Roth’s previous films, The Green Inferno looks very bright and colorful, but also a little clean and a little cheap. I don’t mean for that so sound so mean, but his previous films have displayed a tremendous talent for squeezing production value out of a tiny budget. It also looks very digital, which may have been a budgetary limitation, but I guarantee the location was a factor as well. Lugging around huge cameras and film mags in the jungles of Peru can’t be easy, so the choice to shoot on the relatively small Canon C300 was probably a necessary one. I trust Roth’s eye, so I’m sure the film will look great on the big screen. Regardless of how much money was spent on the make-up effects, I hear they look great and are gruesome as hell.
His first feature length film since 2007’s under-appreciated Hostel: Part II, Roth’s Deodato-inspired horror screened at last year’s Fantastic Fest, and will arrive in US cinemas on September 5.