Sugar and guts

In a scenario like the current one, where fantasy and horror occupy a prominent place in cinephile debate and are the focus of much of the criticism, the figure of Eli Roth is almost anachronistic: a director who has found his place in the industry by practicing the less sophisticated forms of the genre, without asking for permission (or forgiveness) for his fondness for primary impulses. This philosophy reaches its purest expression in "Sweet taste of death (Home of the brave in the original title), a low-budget film made outside of Hollywood, with Roth controlling all fronts, from directing to production, including acting (who knows if out of vanity or simply to save on an actor's salary), and conceptualized from a bloody occurrence: a disturbing ice cream vendor who controls the will of children in a suburban town and urges them to massacre their parents, teachers, and adult authority figures. There's no need to look for meaning, because there's nothing to analyze outside of the orgy of excesses gore, which never reaches the expected euphoria, perhaps because the staging is clumsy even for the low standards of the director of Hostel (2005), and the images are diluted with artificial intelligence, a fact that has caused viral indignation, but which at its core connects with the lack of consideration of the lineage of exploitation cinema that Roth defends with more will than success.