Roth has repeatedly cited Cannibal Holocaust as a major influence. He even named his film after the fictional location in Deodato’s masterpiece (the characters in Cannibal Holocaust travel to "The Green Inferno" to find the lost filmmakers). However, Roth made two critical changes for the 2013 version:
In Roth’s lens, cannibalism isn’t random monstrosity—it’s . The tribe eats the activists not out of hunger, but because one activist (Alejandro) tries to destroy their village. To the tribe, this is warfare, not evil. Roth forces the audience to sit with an uncomfortable question: Is their justice more or less hypocritical than our drone strikes, prison systems, or corporate exploitation? The Green Inferno -2013-
If you have never seen the film, these are the sequences that have entered horror folklore: Roth has repeatedly cited Cannibal Holocaust as a
Moreover, the film has aged surprisingly well in the context of "cancel culture." Roth’s satire of clueless activists who actually cause more harm than good feels more prescient now than in 2013. The film asks an uncomfortable question: What if the "noble savage" is a myth, and the real savage is the arrogant Westerner who thinks he knows better? The tribe eats the activists not out of
uses the "cannibal" trope not just for shock value, but as a scathing critique of modern "slacktivism"—the shallow, performance-based activism that prioritizes social media validation over genuine cultural understanding. II. The Critique of "Slacktivism" Performative Activism
Filmed in a single, shaky long take, the crash sequence is genuinely disorienting. Roth uses sound design—screaming engines, snapping bones, the roar of the jungle—to create immediate chaos.
The final act introduces a darkly comedic twist: Justine discovers that the tribe’s entire food supply is laced with the wrecked plane’s fuel. She sets a portion of the village ablaze. Roth deliberately makes the audience cheer for the destruction of a culture—a moral gray area that separates The Green Inferno from simpler slasher films.