Cannibal Holocaust

The problem with a movie like Cannibal Holocaust isn’t the graphic violence. Yes, the squeamish can be turned off by the extraordinarily visceral nature of the gore in this movie (and there is a LOT of gore and violence). There’s also the legitimate destroying of many live animals, including a long, grotesque slaughter of a tortoise. And the nearly pornographic sex scene towards the end. These are all issues, but it’s not what makes Cannibal Holocaust a poor movie. It’s that the movie is so unbelievably unsubtle about it’s approach to delivering a message. The conceit of the movie is that four young people making a documentary about lost Amazonian tribal people were captured and killed by one of those cannibal tribes. A rescue mission gets the footage, and you then find out what really happened on the trip. And this is where the movie derails itself. Come to find out, the filmmakers suddenly become fucking lunatics. One shoots a tribal person from another tribe in the leg to capture them and use them as a guide to the nearest village. They capture another young tribal woman and two of the group rape her, while a third films it; the only female of the kids is livid ... that they’re wasting their remaining filmstock capturing the rape. Not that there IS a rape, just that they’re documenting it. Once in the village, they decide to burn down the village in a display of power, so the tribespeople will fear them and be cooperative. Two of them even rub salt in the wound by fucking in the remains of one of the burned huts, in full display of the tribe. This all leads to them getting ambushed by the cannibal tree people tribe, tortured and eaten. The last line of the movie is spoken in narration, by the man who led the mission to get the film canisters, as he walks out of a private screening of the horrific film and says “I wonder who the real cannibals are”. OH REALLY. YOU WONDER THAT HUH?!? This movie’s rock-stupid approach to morality is beyond offensive, beyond simplistic. If this was supposed to be a commentary on imperialism and if being “civilized” is merely an artifice, it is handled in such a bungling, overbearing, and frankly unbelievable way. The gore and the violence of this movie are enough to put off anyone, but the real repugnance on display isn’t the simulated violence; it’s that the filmmakers think so little of you, the viewer, that you have to be spoon-fed morality in the most basic of forms, and have it explained to you in the broadest of strokes. This movie attempts to shock you with gore and sneak in a moral message, but the gore numbs you to the inhumanity, and the shallow attempt to make this into some morality play is insulting at best. There is nothing to be gained by watching this so-called cult classic. You can see good gore effects in dozens, hundreds of other movies. You can get the same moral quandaries delivered in far better movies. This is trash. Stupid, revolting trash.