Eli Roth, once again showing his ability to waste his more than adequate filmmaking skills on torture porn the sake of nothing but torture porn, technically well-done but with nothing to actually redeem it beyond the extent to which you enjoy obscenely unflinching brutality, and no originality, only novelty in persuit of the same, just a masterful abilty at repeating the exact sort of think he’s seen before, tweaked just enough to be a different movie. Even the name is ripped off from a device used in the genuine gore classic “Cannibal Holocaust”. Plus, despite showing the most graphic violence imaginable, he studiosly avoids showing so much as a nipple during this films more than an hour of showing “amazonian natives” running wild. I have to imagine there’s an x-rated cut of this floating around somewhere, and honestly, I’d respect that more than this. You want to be genuinely transgressive, that’s one thing, but this is somehow torture porn and yet totally prudish.
I mean, look. I liked “Cannibal Holocaust” too. But there’s a difference between somebody making “Cannibal Holocaust”, and somebody seeing “Cannibal Holocaust” and saying, “I want to make that too.” Except, you know, also including some standard de riguer cliches from newer cliched movies.
