The movie was inspired by and serves as an homage to Italian cannibal films of the late 1970s and early '80s "cannibal boom", particularly Cannibal Holocaust (1980), which features a film-within-a-film titled The Green Inferno.

9 Cannibal Holocaust\n\n Cannibal Holocaust is one of the goriest movies ever made and even includes real animal deaths on screen, leading to its ban in Italy for violating animal cruelty laws. Cannibal Holocaust also received a five-year ban in America for animal cruelty and extreme violence.