Eli Roth Finally Back Directing, And It Could Be Cannibals

I am going to say this and it may not be popular, but here goes: Eli Roth's movies were getting BETTER until he stepped away and started producing and acting in a bunch of stuff. Yes, I am saying that Hostel Part II is actually the best Eli Roth movie. I don't know if even Eli would agree with me on that, but I think Hostel Part II is rich and interesting and layered in a way that Cabin Fever and Hostel were not, and I think Eli was showing real skill in his directing. 

Now, it's likely that he directed a whole bunch of The Man With The Iron Fists, which is officially RZA's directorial debut, but he hasn't officially directed a feature since Hostel Part II. That's coming up on five years. I've been waiting for Eli to finally announce a new project, and it's finally happened at Cannes, and it's called Green Inferno.

That name will ring familiar with fans of 1970s cannibal movies like Cannibal Holocaust and Make Them Die Slowly, as it's what the Amazon rain forest is sometimes called in these wonderful Italian gore pictures. In fact Cannibal Holocaust II (no relation to the original) was in some places titled Green Inferno... and is considered the last film of that particular cycle. So it's fitting that Eli, a student of these sorts of movies, would try to start it back up with a film with the same title.

The cannibal genre has never quite come back. Jonathan Hensleigh ripped off Cannibal Holocaust in his 2007 Welcome to the Jungle, but the film is mostly a bore. Ruggero Deodato, director of Cannibal Holocaust, was so inspired by his appearance in Hostel Part II that he tried to get an official companion film, The Cannibals, off the ground. It never got funded. I wonder if any of that plays into Green Inferno.