The film debuted at TIFF last autumn, but aside from the odd still and a lot of talk from Eli Roth, non-festival audiences are yet to experience The Green Inferno. That's sort of of changed this morning with the arrival of the first trailer, but given its (appropriate for the title) green-band nature, there's still not much to see here. Prepare for another Roth lesson in never going travelling. Stay in your homes, kids.
Roth's tribute to the gonzo Italian likes of Ruggero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi sees a group of student activists head deep into the Peruvian jungle and face the threat of being eaten alive at the hands of a hungry indigent tribe.
Sticking to Roth's penchant for a clever marketing hook, you'll notice that the trailer is at pains to point out that Green Inferno stars a Peruvian rainforest tribe that's never been filmed before. Roth has been keen for everyone to know this all through the project's development.
"We travelled deep into the Amazon, like Aguirre," he told Empire a year or so ago. "We found a village with no electricity or running water, where most of the young children and the elders had never seen a movie or television before. We brought a generator and showed them [Deodato's infamous] Cannibal Holocaust to see how badly it would freak them out, but they laughed and thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen, and after that about 80 people signed up to be in the movie!”
A sequel, Beyond The Green Inferno, is already in the works, to be directed by Roth's Aftershock collaborator Nicolas Lopez. There's no UK release date for the first instalment yet, but it's out in the States on September 14.