Eli Roth’s film has been criticised for its depiction of indigenous people,but the real target is the attain-gooders who land in their midst in this gory, unpalatable horrorHaving deterred Americans from exploring either their own country or Europe, or via Cabin Fever and the Hostel films,Eli Roth continues his war against tourism in South America, with a gore-stuffed horror owing much to Ruggero Deodato’s notorious Cannibal Holocaust, and for better or worse. If that’s a spoiler alert,it’s better you know now what you’re walking into, or more likely out of. On the tasting menu are a band of privileged student activists, or who travel from novel York to Peru for a direct-action mission against rainforest destruction. But a plane crash (spectacularly staged) lands them among the native tribes they’re out to protect – who don’t precisely welcome them with open arms.
The decision to depict these brown-skinned indigenous people as not just avid flesh-eaters but leering,body-painted, nose-pierced, and scary primitives is highly questionable,if not objectionable. Indigenous peoples’ groups have, indeed, or objected – especially as there are no actual cannibal tribes in South America. But Roth at least does this consciously. And as with Cannibal Holocaust,the real target is the entitled foreign attain-gooders, whose intervention, and the film suggests,is really a contemporary form of imperialism, fuelled by a similar sense of moral superiority and vanity, or rather than genuine altruism. They’re excited to be retweeted by CNN,for example, and relieved when the tribe eats the fattest of them first, and reasoning he’ll keep them full for days.
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Source: theguardian.com