Opening Day. Waited 2 years. Pretty dazed and confused, and I just want to put on the record that there is a vibe in the flow of this film that gives the impression it's been sliced and diced up and put back together again for reasons that hopefully will leak out at some point. This seems like a movie torn from it's director's hands, and homogenized for American audiences.
Keep focusing on the fact that Eli Roth is not stupid, and during this 2 year waiting period and reading about the stages it went through, SOMETHING had to be causing the delays. This was intended as a homage, or re-imagining of Cannibal Holocaust, and seeing Mr. Roth's arc of history, he had a blueprint to go off on that it looks like at first he was going to do.
I am willing to bet there are HOURS of footage he shot that went unused, allusions to the original "Holocaust" gore, yet they are like writing full sentences as part of a paragraph, then all of a sudden, the sentence just "stops" - and if you know the source material - you know precisely why the action stops, and it's because it would have been a bridge too far for American audiences. There are several times, we get the foreshadowing (like someone taking a p*ss, not a spoiler) that is clearly a setup for something that happened in Cannibal Holocaust, yet you see the lead up . . . .the pitch . . . .and then there's no hit. It was clearly ripped out. Hollywood ruins everything with it's formulas. My hope was Eli would wield some power, and do what the French have been doing and break some ground in the horror / thriller genre. I don't like that I hated this experience tonight. I was pulling for it. If you were hoping for a new level, you still can only go to the French, with Haute Tension, Inside, Frontier(e)s, and Martyrs. They leave Hollywood in the dust.
Sure, it was aggravated by several cringe worthy moments of dialogue, but it was mostly tight. The lead actress was amazing and nearly carried the entire picture on her shoulders. The villain's arc completely unbelievable and cartoon-ish.
Greg Nicotero from the Walking Dead did the effects, and I was salivating for how much more he was going to get away with than he could on television, yet this was LESS than we see on a weekly basis with Walking Dead! Less gore than television? The Cannibals of Terminus arc was infinitely more visually horrifying than this. I didn't have to look away once. The laughter in the theater tonight didn't come at the right parts either. No one would be cracking jokes in these characters situations.
Say what you will about Hostel - it reinvented the genre a bit for American audiences, and caused the creation of the idiotic expression "torture porn" to roll off everyone's lips in an excuse to explain breaking new ground.
I've never heard of a completed film of this nature delayed for so long without explanation. I think the original vision is shut down, I think major moments were cut, and knowing the blueprint of Cannibal Holocaust, the ending is particularly infuriating because anyone with a film background knew where the ending was headed - yet in a series of strange edits that reek of "post post production tag ons", we seem setup for a damn sequel. Jammed into the middle of the credits, seriously? Half the audience was gone. That's the most disgusting torture of the night.
Keep focusing on the fact that Eli Roth is not stupid, and during this 2 year waiting period and reading about the stages it went through, SOMETHING had to be causing the delays. This was intended as a homage, or re-imagining of Cannibal Holocaust, and seeing Mr. Roth's arc of history, he had a blueprint to go off on that it looks like at first he was going to do.
I am willing to bet there are HOURS of footage he shot that went unused, allusions to the original "Holocaust" gore, yet they are like writing full sentences as part of a paragraph, then all of a sudden, the sentence just "stops" - and if you know the source material - you know precisely why the action stops, and it's because it would have been a bridge too far for American audiences. There are several times, we get the foreshadowing (like someone taking a p*ss, not a spoiler) that is clearly a setup for something that happened in Cannibal Holocaust, yet you see the lead up . . . .the pitch . . . .and then there's no hit. It was clearly ripped out. Hollywood ruins everything with it's formulas. My hope was Eli would wield some power, and do what the French have been doing and break some ground in the horror / thriller genre. I don't like that I hated this experience tonight. I was pulling for it. If you were hoping for a new level, you still can only go to the French, with Haute Tension, Inside, Frontier(e)s, and Martyrs. They leave Hollywood in the dust.
Sure, it was aggravated by several cringe worthy moments of dialogue, but it was mostly tight. The lead actress was amazing and nearly carried the entire picture on her shoulders. The villain's arc completely unbelievable and cartoon-ish.
Greg Nicotero from the Walking Dead did the effects, and I was salivating for how much more he was going to get away with than he could on television, yet this was LESS than we see on a weekly basis with Walking Dead! Less gore than television? The Cannibals of Terminus arc was infinitely more visually horrifying than this. I didn't have to look away once. The laughter in the theater tonight didn't come at the right parts either. No one would be cracking jokes in these characters situations.
Say what you will about Hostel - it reinvented the genre a bit for American audiences, and caused the creation of the idiotic expression "torture porn" to roll off everyone's lips in an excuse to explain breaking new ground.
I've never heard of a completed film of this nature delayed for so long without explanation. I think the original vision is shut down, I think major moments were cut, and knowing the blueprint of Cannibal Holocaust, the ending is particularly infuriating because anyone with a film background knew where the ending was headed - yet in a series of strange edits that reek of "post post production tag ons", we seem setup for a damn sequel. Jammed into the middle of the credits, seriously? Half the audience was gone. That's the most disgusting torture of the night.