nigel_essex Review of Cannibal Holocaust

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Grotesque and shocking but not for the reasons you might think.

[7/10 · 29 January 2021]

Cannibal Holocaust, tacky title but not as tacky as it first appears. This is a competent well made film with a lot to say and some new ways to tell a story. Basically it's a film of two halves a) anthropologist seeks out a lost documentary crew and b) we find out what happened to them through the footage shot by the documentarians. So it's an early 'found footage' film and you can see the proto reality the actors and director wanted to achieve. In this day when everything is reality (even though it's not) it's amazing to think how shocking this must have been back in the day. Now we have the comfort of viewing such material and saying, "fake", seeing the developmental special effects of the time (with Walking Dead jaded eyes) and saying, "seen better". But this looked real in 1980. Hence the controversy. Yes and no. What is really shocking is the degree of sexual violence in this film. Rape and genital mutilation are rife and this makes for uncomfortable viewing. I suppose this is a metaphor for the West's rape of nature and the destruction of virgin rainforest. It's overdone and unnecessary. I can imagine the writer explaining this to the producers who went, "gee, we can up the nudity and throw in some rape scenes" while perhaps another said, "yeah, I like mud wrestling, can we put that in too? ". I seems they missed the point. Further to this is the film's treatment of animals. Various unfortunate creatures are dispatched live on camera. OK, death happens in the real world all the time but I don't want to have it as an entertainment. Unfortunately, the cannibal genre seems to portray this a lot. I suppose it reflects the savagery of nature but animal snuff footage is wrong. So two big negatives to this film. But taking those aside the film works as an 'man against nature' adventure, an Emerald Forest or The Revenant in its way. Its message is clear (although one feels as if one is sitting next to the director shouting it through a megaphone) the civilization of the West is far from civil.