Eli Roth, in addition to being a director, is also a writer, producer, and actor. It has been announced that Roth will be directing the upcoming Borderlands movie, and to those who have seen Roth’s work, this is certainly an interesting choice. Roth has previously directed seven feature films, as well as a few shorts.
The small amount of knowledge about the Borderlands movie is that the lead will be Lilith, which suggests that the movie will be attempting to take on a more feminist perspective. Craig Mazin of Chernobyl has been announced as a writer, and Roth, so far, does not appear to be involved with the writing process. So, with the focus on Roth’s previous directorial work, what is it about him that makes video game and movie fans alike wonder why he would be given this opportunity? What past problems in his work should the director avoid in his approach to the Borderlands movie?
This film was Roth’s directorial debut. He also wrote the film, and it has received praise for its originality. Cabin Fever tells the story of a group of college students who go out into the woods on vacation but end up contracting a flesh-eating disease. In many horror films, there is the phenomenon of ‘the final girl’, but in Cabin Fever, the role is taken on by two male characters, each briefly thinking they are the only one of their friends to survive.
The two women in this film are actually the first to die. They are fairly helpless and spend most of the movie functioning as sexual objects for the male characters. The lead of the film even tries to have sex with one of the women while she sleeps. What occurs in this film suggests that Roth had difficulty writing a female character, an idea that is furthered by his second film.
This is another film that Roth both wrote and directed. It was, like Cabin Fever, praised for its creativity, as the film engages with a fear that seems almost plausible, and deals with notions regarding class status and the effect that huge amounts of money can have on people. But this film has even worse female characters than Cabin Fever.
In this film, the women are only in the movie as bait. The protagonists are men, the torturers are men, and the people running the underground torture ring, are men. The women supply gratuitous nudity, and are, yet again, sexual objects for the male characters.
Again, Roth wrote and directed this film. Seemingly in an attempt to make amends for his previous two films, or perhaps to satisfy the desire to see women being tortured, this is his first film to have a female lead. The women are still relatively flat characters, however. They are not particularly interesting or relatable, each taking on a stereotypical role. The nerdy girl, the mean girl, and the nice girl, who turns out at the end to be not so nice.
There are two male side characters in this film, and they are far more dynamic and compelling than any of the female leads. One man, desperately wanting to torture and murder a woman, in the face of actually doing it, is sick and disgusted with himself, and decides to leave the session halfway through. His friend, however, who was convinced to come along and had no real desire of his own to torture in the first place, while looking at the woman he has bought, decides he actually quite enjoys the opportunity he has been given.
This is the most recent true horror film that Roth has made, again, he writes and directs. The film features both male and female leads. The main female lead, Lorenza Izzo, would later become Roth’s wife. He is 17 years her senior. When this movie came out, her role was Roth’s most dynamic female character yet. Some male characters in this film are written believably, some less so. But the credibility of these characters is a small issue in the face of how problematic The Green Inferno is.
The film follows a group of college students who attempt to protest the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and of an indigenous tribe that lives within the area that is intended to be clear-cut. On their flight back to the college campus, their plane crashes, and they land in the area they were attempting to preserve. They are then kidnapped and killed off by the indigenous tribe who is not given any name, or any language, but is just a collection of various stereotypes. Their only character trait is that they are cannibals and appear to only eat foreigners.
At the end of the film, the story attempts to go back on all that is previously said, as Izzo’s character tells her father, a lawyer for the UN, that the indigenous people were harmless and should be protected. Although in the face of how the indigenous people are portrayed in the entirety of the film up to this point, this ending is too little, too late.
This is the most recent film that Roth has both written and directed. The film attempts to be feminist, but like The Green Inferno, the message is muddled through contradictory ideas. The choices made by the female characters make little to no sense, and the story is riddled with plot holes. The film suggests that any happily married man, given the opportunity, would cheat on his wife, no matter what. It is no question that some men and some women do cheat, but to say that every man would is more problematic than it is helpful to society.
The movie tries to showcase the man as the real villain, but when considering that the girls engage in property destruction, rape, and murder, it doesn’t come across. Lorenza Izzo stars in this film as well, and in light of her and Roth’s recent divorce, it does raise the question if either of them related more to the plot of this film than they might like to admit.
This film was only directed by Roth, not written. This might explain why it is also his first film not to feature any nudity. This movie was based on a book, but still the female characters are flat and not especially relevant in the story.
One dies early in the film, and the other spends the majority of it in a coma. The film is competently made, but something about it seems to suggest that Roth didn’t really care about this as much as he did when he was making things more in the vein of torture porn.
Again, this film was not written by Roth, he only directed it. This film, tonally, is very different from all of Roth’s previous work, and it has probably his most dynamic female character ever, Florence Zimmerman, played by Cate Blanchett. Even still, she is just a side character to male leads.
Considering the feminist perspective the Borderlands movie seems to be going for, Eli Roth is a very odd choice as a director. Although, It is true that of the films he has made, all seem to embody at least one of the many elements present in Borderlands, be it guns, fantasy, horror, action, adventure… and so perhaps with a talented writer like Craig Mazin behind him, Roth may surprise critics and fans alike.
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