Eli Roth has made a name for himself as a horror director who often features significant gore and torture in his films, specifically leaning into the splatter subgenre. He's best known for the Hostel movies, but more recently he's given us films like the holiday slasher Thanksgiving.
Over the years, Roth has made quite a few popular horror movies, but while some of them are great and worth revisiting years later, a few are better off skipped altogether.
Cabin Fever (2002)
- Writer/Director: Eli Roth
- Cast: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent, Joey Kern, Arie Verveen, and Giuseppe Andrews
- Verdict: WATCH
Roth's directorial debut came out swinging with nightmarish imagery and skin-crawling moments (remember THAT shaving scene?). A comedy-horror film about teenagers dealing with a flesh-eating virus while on vacation, Cabin Fever doesn't hold a candle to 2002's other big viral outbreak film 28 Days Later, but it's still plenty of fun without becoming too self-serious.
Roth has a knack for mean-spirited humor in his movies, establishing a clear tone and helping to separate them from more lighthearted comedic horror films. Cabin Fever was a bold debut with plenty of gore, Roth's trademark, with his follow-up films becoming increasingly deranged.
Hostel (2005)
- Writer/Director: Eli Roth
- Cast: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eyþór Guðjónsson, Barbara Nedeljáková, and Rick Hoffman
- Verdict: SKIP
Hostel followed the first Saw movie, which had released one year prior, and for many people Hostel has become the poster child for what people call the "torture porn" category of the horror genre. The premise is simple, a group of American tourists travel through Slovakia and a clandestine organization kidnaps them and hands them over to their wealthy clients to torture.
It's a bleak and gritty film with some extremely violent scenes, perhaps most notably the eyeball removal scene and the one where a character slices through another's achilles tendon. Hostel's gore gets overhyped quite a bit because while there are a few truly horrific moments, they're few and far between. The actual film itself ends up being rather... boring, especially when compared to the first Saw.
Hostel: Part II (2007)
- Writer/Director: Eli Roth
- Cast: Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips, and Richard Burgi
- Verdict: WATCH
Hostel: Part II does everything better than its predecessor. The main characters are far more interesting, the kills are way more twisted, and this one has a really cool and underrated final girl played by Lauren German. Unlike the first movie, we get to see characters get more of their due comeuppance.
The sequel is way more entertaining, as it doesn't take itself anywhere near as seriously as the first movie. I think it helped that this one mixed things up by making women both the leads and the villains, providing a more enjoyable and diverse mix of characters. You don't even need to watch the first movie to jump headfirst into this one!
The Green Inferno (2013)
- Writer/Director: Eli Roth
- Cast: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Daryl Sabara, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Sky Ferreira, and Magda Apanowicz
- Verdict: SKIP
The Green Inferno might actually be the horror filmmaker's worst movie. Yes it has the depraved violence and gore we've come to expect, this time revolving around a cannibal clan, but it's also a highly controversial movie due to its racist depiction of Indigenous people.
Not only was the movie distasteful, it simply isn't very good. I normally roll my eyes at horror haters who claim the entire genre is evil and depraved, full of nothing but pure gore and torment, but movies like The Green Inferno are exactly the type of film they're talking about. Thankfully there aren't as many of them.
Knock Knock (2015)
- Writer/Director: Eli Roth
- Cast: Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, Ana de Armas, Aaron Burns, Ignacia Allamand, and Colleen Camp
- Verdict: SKIP
With a cast that includes Keanu Reeves and Ana de Armas, you'd think Knock Knock would be a better movie, but it actually features one of Reeves' worst performances (and I say that as a big fan of his!). There's an argument to be made that this film could be enjoyed if you think of it as campy, but it's just not a very good movie overall. It was a remake of an already controversial 1977 film, Death Game, and when people discuss it now it's usually only to remark on just how bad it is.
Thanksgiving (2023)
- Writer/Director: Eli Roth
- Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, and Gina Gershon
- Verdict: WATCH
This is one of my personal favorite Roth movies. Released in 2023, Thanksgiving absolutely nails the horror-comedy balance and created a really fun Thanksgiving slasher film. The idea for the movie actually stems from a fake trailer Roth made for the 2007 movie Grindhouse.
The film gives us a new villain in John Carver, a murderer stalking the people of Plymouth, Massachusetts one year after a brutal Black Friday massacre at a local retailer. Thanksgiving did well enough in theaters that a sequel is in the works and expected to release this fall.