I can't rate this movie. On one hand, it's a poor, no-budget gorefest with unnecessary animal cruelty and exploitation. On the other hand, it's haunting, atmospheric and thought trough. One thing is sure; there will never be a movie like this again.
Starting out as a camp-fest promise, four youngsters travel into the jungle to shoot a documentary on cannibal tribes. Just when you expect to see the first decapitations, we cut to a middle aged professor, who is dispatched to find out what happened to said four youngsters. The movie stays very serious from now on, and has some very powerful scenes. The sense that it's just a silly movie passes, and you become engorged in the insanity of the green hell.
There are scenes in here I actually skipped bits of, which I've never done in a movie before. It's not the fact that they're inspired in their sadism, because I've seen worse, it's that they're REAL, shot in the same shaky blurred style as news of that age. Our brain, conditioned as it is to accept footage like this as the truth, sees through the sometimes lacking effects and the hammy acting and becomes terrified.
In the end, the movie does give you a little moral tidbit, which doesn't surprise or irritate. The movie-makers doesn't need to tell their point, we've been shown well enough. Not even Chuck Pahlaniuk can conjure up such distrust and disgust in mankind. For this, Cannibal Holocaust will always be remembered.
Starting out as a camp-fest promise, four youngsters travel into the jungle to shoot a documentary on cannibal tribes. Just when you expect to see the first decapitations, we cut to a middle aged professor, who is dispatched to find out what happened to said four youngsters. The movie stays very serious from now on, and has some very powerful scenes. The sense that it's just a silly movie passes, and you become engorged in the insanity of the green hell.
There are scenes in here I actually skipped bits of, which I've never done in a movie before. It's not the fact that they're inspired in their sadism, because I've seen worse, it's that they're REAL, shot in the same shaky blurred style as news of that age. Our brain, conditioned as it is to accept footage like this as the truth, sees through the sometimes lacking effects and the hammy acting and becomes terrified.
In the end, the movie does give you a little moral tidbit, which doesn't surprise or irritate. The movie-makers doesn't need to tell their point, we've been shown well enough. Not even Chuck Pahlaniuk can conjure up such distrust and disgust in mankind. For this, Cannibal Holocaust will always be remembered.