The Green Inferno

Eli Roth shifts from his recent role as a powerhouse producer (The Last Exorcism, Aftershock) to step back into the director's chair with this fun riff on that seventies/ eighties horror sub-genre from Italy: the cannibal film. This loving — and ferociously bloody — homage is guaranteed to shock and horrify audiences.

Idealistic Justine (Lorenza Izzo) joins a group of campus radicals on a mission to disrupt the illegal clear-cutting of a Peruvian jungle, which is endangering the tranquil lives of an isolated Amazonian tribe. Armed with good intentions and the power of their cellphone cameras, the group flies to Peru and seemingly succeeds in their mission. But the activists' celebration quickly turns to tragedy when their plane crashes in the jungle — and they find themselves on the dinner menu of the very people they were trying to protect.

Shot on location in the remote Amazonian rainforest along the Aguirre River (named for Werner Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God), Roth's film channels the likes of Herzog and Terrence Malick with its gorgeous footage of the dramatic landscape. With a keen eye for anthropological detail, and by using members of a real local tribe instead of actors to play the cannibals, Roth achieves a stunning level of realism in his depictions of the culture of his jungle inhabitants.

A smart and funny statement on political engagement in the age of the self-obsessed social-media generation, The Green Inferno serves up equal amounts of gore and shock alongside the satire.

COLIN GEDDES