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Eli Roth: RANKED

If you're a horror fan, you almost certainly have an opinion about Eli Roth. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground with the guy. People either think he's one of the most exciting genre filmmakers of the last quarter century, or they dismiss him as a provocateur who mistakes gallons of fake blood for actual storytelling.


Even within the horror community (which is usually pretty welcoming of filmmakers who push boundaries) Roth remains one of the most divisive directors working today.


Personally, I've always found that fascinating because I happen to be a big fan of what he does, even while acknowledging many of the criticisms that get thrown his way.


Roth belongs to that group of filmmakers who critics dubbed the "Splat Pack," directors who emerged in the early 2000s with movies that were unapologetically violent, bloody, controversial, and determined to make audiences squirm.


Alongside filmmakers like Rob Zombie, Alexandre Aja, James Wan, Greg McLean and others, he helped usher in a new wave of horror that embraced practical gore effects, outrageous violence, and a complete disregard for good taste. Whether you loved that movement or hated it, there's no denying it left a huge mark on horror cinema.


Born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1972, Roth's love affair with horror began early after seeing Ridley Scott's Alien. Like so many filmmakers before him, he started making homemade movies as a kid, eventually shooting more than a hundred short films with his brothers before attending NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.


Along the way he worked just about every odd job imaginable to finance his filmmaking dreams, including one story that has become Hollywood legend involving Penthouse magazine and pretending to be someone he definitely wasn't online.


He paid his dues, worked on Private Parts, crossed paths with David Lynch, developed animation projects, wrote scripts whenever he could, and eventually scraped together enough money to make a tiny independent horror movie called Cabin Fever. The rest, as they say, is history.


That history changed horror movies in a big way. Cabin Fever arrived in 2003 like a bucket of infected blood thrown directly into the audience's face. Made for next to nothing, it became a surprise hit and immediately announced that Roth wasn't interested in subtlety.


He loved the splatter films of the '70s and '80s, adored practical makeup effects, worshipped filmmakers who believed fake blood should be pumped by the gallon instead of generated inside a computer, and he wasn't shy about wearing those influences on his sleeve.


Quentin Tarantino famously championed the film, calling it one of the best new American movies he'd seen, and attaching his name to Roth's early work certainly helped introduce audiences (and critics) to a filmmaker who was proudly carrying the exploitation torch into the twenty-first century.


Then came Hostel, and that's the movie that really cemented Roth's reputation. It's probably the film most people associate with him, and it's also the movie that helped popularize (whether he likes the label or not) the term "torture porn." I've always thought that description misses what's actually interesting about Hostel.


Yes, it's gruesome. Yes, it contains some incredibly unpleasant moments. But underneath all the gore is one of the funniest and sharpest satires of ugly American tourism ever made. It's a movie about entitled, obnoxious American guys who travel overseas acting like the world exists for their amusement, only to discover that they're not nearly as welcome as they think they are.


It's darkly hilarious, wonderfully nasty, and still, in my opinion, Eli Roth's best film.


Now, I know a lot of people simply can't get past the blood. That's understandable. Roth's movies are spectacularly violent. Limbs come off, skin peels away, eyeballs burst, bodies are mutilated in increasingly creative ways, and practically every bodily fluid imaginable ends up splattered across the screen.


But here's the thing: I've never found most of his horror movies genuinely mean-spirited. They're too ridiculous for that. They're so wildly excessive, so cartoonishly over-the-top, that they become funny.


Watching one of his movies with a packed theater full of horror fans is one of my favorite moviegoing experiences. Everybody is laughing, screaming, groaning, cheering, and reacting exactly the way audiences reacted to great exploitation movies decades ago. It's communal filmmaking in the best possible way.


That's another reason I admire Roth so much. He's one of the few contemporary horror filmmakers who still understands the value of practical effects. Real makeup. Latex. Buckets of stage blood. Old-school craftsmanship.


His movies feel tactile because they are tactile. You can see the influence of Tom Savini, the Italian gore masters, and the outrageous practical effects that defined so much horror in the '70s and '80s.


Whether he's paying tribute to Cannibal Holocaust with The Green Inferno, spoofing holiday slashers with Thanksgiving, or gleefully drowning audiences in absurd mayhem with Ice Cream Man, his affection for horror history is obvious in every frame.


That doesn't mean every movie works. Far from it. He's had some very noticeable misfires. I think Hostel: Part II completely loses the satirical bite that made the original so effective and settles for empty brutality. Death Wish never really finds its footing despite an interesting screenplay.


Borderlands was clearly a project where the studio got involved, the production spiraled out of control, and Roth's sensibilities were swallowed by blockbuster expectations. But one of the things I admire about him is that he never stays away from horror for very long.


Even after taking detours into family fantasy with The House with a Clock in Its Walls, erotic thrillers like Knock Knock, or big-budget studio assignments, he inevitably comes back to blood, guts, outrageous humor, and the movies that inspired him to become a filmmaker in the first place.


He's also much more than just a director. As an actor, he'll forever be remembered by many people as Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, a role that proved he could steal scenes in front of the camera just as effectively as he could behind it.


He's produced interesting horror projects, championed forgotten genre films, curated museum exhibits celebrating horror history, and perhaps most importantly created Eli Roth's History of Horror, one of the very best documentary series ever made about the genre.


If you love horror movies, that series is essential viewing. Roth interviews directors, writers, actors, effects artists, and historians while examining the many different branches of horror, and his enthusiasm is completely infectious. More than anything else he's ever done, it demonstrates that he's not just someone who makes horror movies, he genuinely loves horror movies.


I've had the pleasure of meeting Eli Roth a couple of times at horror conventions, and he comes across exactly the way you'd hope he would: approachable, funny, enthusiastic, and endlessly passionate about the genre.


He clearly loves these movies as much as the fans do, and I think that passion shines through even when one of his films doesn't completely succeed. I'd much rather watch an ambitious Eli Roth misfire than a safe, anonymous studio horror movie that has no personality whatsoever.


So with the release of Ice Cream Man, another gleefully ridiculous, unapologetically bloody love letter to the splatter films that inspired him, I thought it would be a good time to revisit his directing career.


He's only made ten feature films, but they've generated enough conversation, controversy, admiration, criticism, laughter, and gallons of fake blood to fill the filmographies of directors twice as prolific. Some of these movies are modern horror classics. Some are fascinating failures. All of them are unmistakably Eli Roth.


So here they are: all ten of Eli Roth's feature films, ranked in order of my personal preference.


ELI ROTH'S MOVIES RANKED:



Eli Roth’s best movie is also the one that cemented his reputation as one of the most controversial horror filmmakers of his generation. Yes, it is incredibly violent, gruesome and filled with scenes that helped inspire the unfortunate phrase “torture porn,” but it is also a very funny and sharp satire about loud, entitled American tourists who travel overseas believing the entire world exists for their pleasure. The gore is effective, the tension is terrific, and the dark humor makes it much smarter than its reputation suggests.


Roth’s feature directorial debut came out of nowhere and immediately established his particular combination of horror, disgusting practical effects and very strange comedy. The premise is beautifully simple: a group of young people in an isolated cabin encounter a rapidly spreading flesh-eating infection and gradually turn against one another. It is gross, funny, unpredictable and filled with the kind of scrappy low-budget energy that you simply cannot fake.


This nasty, funny and wildly entertaining erotic thriller stars Keanu Reeves as a married man whose life is destroyed after two beautiful strangers arrive at his door during a storm. Roth takes the basic setup of the 1977 film Death Game and turns it into an outrageous satire about temptation, marriage, masculinity and the consequences of making one incredibly stupid decision. Reeves completely commits to the escalating madness, and the two women, Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas, are terrific.


Roth’s loving tribute to the notorious cannibal films of the 1970s is certainly not for everyone, but it delivers exactly what it promises. Inspired most obviously by Cannibal Holocaust, the movie follows a group of self-righteous student activists whose attempt to save an Indigenous tribe goes very, very badly. It is stomach-churning, absurdly violent and occasionally very funny, with terrific practical effects and Roth’s usual willingness to push everything much further than good taste would normally allow.


Sixteen years after creating the hilarious fake trailer for Grindhouse, Roth finally turned Thanksgiving into a feature-length slasher film. The opening Black Friday riot is an instant classic, it is a beautifully staged explosion of greed, stupidity, violence and holiday shopping insanity. The rest of the movie is a clever and gleefully bloody tribute to the old-fashioned holiday slashers of the ’70s and ’80s, complete with elaborate kills, broad humor and a masked murderer known as John Carver.


After the expensive disaster of Borderlands, Roth wisely returned to the kind of low-budget, unapologetically ridiculous horror movie he clearly loves making. Cursed ice cream causes children to become possessed and murder adults in increasingly disgusting ways, while the mysterious ice cream man carries out a complicated revenge plot worthy of an old-school slasher villain. It is short, goofy, extremely gory and frequently hilarious. It is the kind of movie that becomes even more fun when watched with a loud crowd of horror fans.


Roth’s first PG-rated family movie was an unexpected but enjoyable departure. Jack Black and Cate Blanchett are wonderful together, the production design is terrific, and Roth finds a way to sneak some genuine creepiness into what is essentially a fantasy adventure for younger audiences. It may not have the blood, guts or outrageous violence associated with his horror films, but it proves that he can still create an energetic and entertaining movie without mutilating anyone.


There are a few effective moments in Roth’s remake of the controversial Charles Bronson vigilante classic, and Joe Carnahan’s screenplay contains some interesting ideas. Unfortunately, the movie never finds the right tone, and Bruce Willis appears to be sleepwalking through much of it. Roth stages the violence efficiently, but the film lacks the urgency, anger and disturbing moral ambiguity that made the original so provocative.


This big-budget adaptation of the popular video-game series is the kind of studio disaster where almost nothing works. Despite an impressive cast that includes Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jack Black, the movie feels noisy, confused and completely without personality. Roth seems uncomfortable with the enormous production, the studio interference is apparent, and whatever strange energy might have existed in his original version is nowhere to be found in the finished film.


The original Hostel had a sharp satirical point of view underneath all the blood and torture. The sequel has none of that. It is relentlessly grim, unpleasant and surprisingly dull, replacing the first movie’s dark humor and social commentary with empty brutality. There are a couple of memorable practical effects, but this is Roth at his most simplistic and mean-spirited, and it remains the weakest feature film he has directed. It's awful.



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