I’ve talked before about the confounding writing trend in
horror films that says that, because most of the characters are going to die
anyway, we shouldn’t be made to have any emotional connection to them. As such,
the majority of the main cast is written to be hateful by whatever way
possible, usually through the exhibition of utterly misanthropic behaviour.
Well, the director of today’s film is one of the forefathers of the style in
today’s cinema: Eli Roth. He is also supposedly responsible for the almost-hilariously
misnamed ‘torture porn’ sub-genre, alongside James Wan and Leigh Whannell. Now,
even though his films may contain some of the most loathsome core characters in
film, I do not think he is a bad filmmaker; after all, there were parts of
Hostel that I could get into and his work with RZA made for a surprisingly
entertaining flick with The Man With The Iron Fists. Well, since this is his
first time in the director’s chair since he made the Thanksgiving fake trailer
for the Grindhouse film project, easily the best work of his career, let’s see
if he has grown at all in that time as he creates an homage to the 80’s Amazon
Cannibal sub-genre.
Every so often, the Hollywood scheduling system looks at the
crap that gets screened and bestows a boon on the viewing public with a double
feature from an acclaimed director. 2013 was an amazing year in this regard as
we got not only two releases from David O. Russell with Silver Linings Playbook
and American Hustle, but also the ‘supposedly’ final two theatrical releases
from Steven Soderbergh with Side Effects and Behind The Candelabra. But then,
there are times when the scheduling results in a dual release from a… less
reputable director. This is unfortunately a latter case as we are discussing
another film by Eli Roth. I once again don’t want to completely badmouth his
abilities as a director, as the guy definitely has talent in certain areas.
However, his insistence on filming his own scripts is his biggest flaw; the guy
has character sensibilities that make Mark Renton look like Oskar Schindler.
For as much credit as I was willing to give his last film, it still makes me
feel slightly ill thinking back on it. So, is this film as bad as that… or is it,
by some terrifying miracle, even worse?
