Welcome to the Jungle
November 13, 2007
Rated: Unrated Runtime: 83 min Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
I had high hopes for Welcome to the Jungle, after all it’s from the new Dimension Extreme label and we’ve liked just about everything else they’ve put out. Plus, it’s about cannibals and college kids.. sounds about perfect. Unfortunately, it falls well short of the mark.
This movie is shot mostly using hand held cameras (or the appearance of hand held cameras) in order to give it an immediate and intense feeling, much like The Blair Witch Project. Where it differs is with the characters. With Blair Witch you could allow yourself to believe the fiction for the duration and if you did so, the results were very effective. In Jungle, it’s simply impossible to believe some of the actions of the people on screen are unscripted which yanks you out of the fiction constantly and forces you to see it for what it is, a non-scary low budget film that desperately wants to be treated seriously… and fails.
In 1961 Michael Rockefeller disappeared into the jungles of New Guinea, into an area known to be populated by cannibals. After an extensive manhunt he was declared dead, though no body was ever found. Rumors pop up now and then that an older white guy has been spotted living in the jungle, but no proof has ever been found. Enter our college age kids who hear from a friend of a friend who flies a helicopter that the mysterious white guy has just been spotted, and that this time GPS coordinates are available if they wanted to go check it out. They have video cameras and are looking for adventure, so why the heck not!
Our industrious campers rent themselves a minivan and drive to the border of Irian Jaya where they take off on a multiple day hike with only a couple of small backpacks which miraculously hold their clothes, their tents, their food and enough booze to keep 2 of them sauced at all times. None of these people are campers either, yet they manage just fine for a weeks worth of traveling before things start to go wrong. During that week tensions are high due to the Type A couple getting pissed at the drunk couple for slowing them down, etc. This is actually what kills the movie for me, the fighting and bickering just isn’t realistic under the circumstances and lets you know you’re either watching badly written lines, or some actors doing some bad improv.
There’s also no real tension in the movie. By the time the cannibals show up you just want them to hurry up and make dinner so the drunk couple will shut the hell up. Seriously, I found myself cheering when things go badly for the campers, and this isn’t suppose to be a horror/comedy.
On a side note, the blurb on the cover of this DVD says “Quite possibly the most terrifying film of the last decade.” and the back says “It’s ruthless and grabs you by you throat, shakes the hell out of you and rips your heart out…” I’m not gonna name names, but the guy who wrote that was either in a really good mood or saw a different movie than I did. At first I suspected one of those fake Sony quotes, but it appears legit… legit and confused.
Go ahead, rent this one then tell me with a straight face that it’s a good movie. I dare ya.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Seen it? How many stars do you give it?
(6 votes, average: 2.83 out of 5)
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I knew without a shadow of a doubt as I was writing the last line of this review, that someone would immediately give it a 5 star vote.
Glad to see that some behavior is still highly predictable.