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Eli Roth is somehow one of the most hated directors in modern horror, despite the fact that his last three films have had unique structures, well-shot images, interesting treatments of gory viscera, and more than a little on their mind. Here, we get Roth staging privileged Columbia kids against vague, movie-ish South American geopolitics, with them first relying on their first-world- ed-ness to intervene in deforestation and then finding that first- world-ed-ness no big thing when they run into a tribe of cannibals.

As a work in the genre, Inferno's subject to some imperialist charges in terms of depiction, but his fantasy isn't one of imperialism but instead one in which imperialists are punished. And punished they are here! People are drawn and quartered, darted, shot with arrows, plane-crashed, etc.

This thing has a 50% on RT right now and a 5.0 on here which is pretty much a joke. This is better than many of the films you'll find in critic top-fives at the end of the year.

Low-budget movies are often met with a stupid viewer attitude that says, constantly, "I'm better than this movie I'm watching." I think it's better to ask what one would want from the film and then to see if it delivers.

In this case, like the first ZM film, we have cardboard characters, poor pacing/scripting, and an overuse of CG effects. The good news is that, like the first film, we also get some good make-up work and practical gore (although it's odd that we only see two or three zombie types, the directors having gone to budget-friendly masks and a uniform clothing option that doesn't do the movie any favors).

But yet the thing's still watchable, largely due to the fine lead performances by Andrew Mills and Aaron Stielstra (Van Husen's cameo is a bit underwhelming, but I think that has more to do with scripting and a short production schedule than his work). A lot of the reviews here say the acting's bad, but I'm not sure what they're seeing. The acting amongst the squad is certainly a bit over-the- top, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It wouldn't be in place in a film like Under the Skin, but for this genre stuff, stylized acting makes sense and gives the film what little tone and drive it has. although that's maybe not being fair to the direction and production design which are mostly strong and good for a few great shots amidst all the CG splizz-ing of uniform-zombie-heads.