The pseudo-reality style film shows no sign of disappearing; Cloverfield gives the concept a Godzilla spin, while last year Diary of the Dead and Zombie Diaries brought a new meaning to that zombie movie staple, the head shot. Welcome to the Jungle doesn’t bring anything new to table; in fact the opposite is true, as the film harks back pre-Blair Witch to Cannibal Holocaust.
All these films (well I’ve not seen Cloverfield yet but I’d guess it holds true) have the same initial problem – why would anyone continue filming when faced with a life and death situation? Most attempt to surmount this dilemma in the same way - The Blair Witch Project, Zombie Diaries, The Last Broadcast, Cannibal Holocaust and Diary of the Dead all feature filmmakers as their central characters. We’re expected to accept they’d keep going, past the point where any sane person would have headed for the hills, because it’s their job, and, to varying degrees, this works. Works well enough for us to suspend belief and get carried along for the ride anyway.
It’s a hurdle which Welcome to the Jungle fails to get over. Eschewing the tried and tested filmmaker approach the film features four friends who decide to go looking for fame, fortune and Michael Rockefeller in New Guinea, taking along a couple of cameras to document the quest. Now this may sound like much the same idea, but these aren’t professional filmmakers, they’re actually a bunch of shallow, get-rich-quick, slackers. Infighting dogs their progress, two of the group can barely get out of bed in the morning, and yet we’re supposed to accept they would keep filming almost up to the point of their own death? It doesn’t wash.
I rather enjoyed Jonathan Hensleigh’s The Punisher which was a nice throwback to ‘80s action fair, with Welcome to the Jungle he’s attempting to give us a modern take on the late seventies/early eighties Cannibal movie craze. The film works well enough for most of the first hour, as we witness the start of the quest and the disintegration of the group’s friendship, before the two couples go their own way. It’s at this point the film falls apart, it looses all credibility and tension and just becomes an excuse for Hensleigh to show us some gruesome make-up work. It doesn’t help matters that the characters aren’t particularly sympathetic, one pair are so obnoxious you actually want them to get killed, while the other two are just plain dull and, in the final fifteen minutes, behave so stupidly you feel they deserve what they get.
This sort of fake reality filmmaking isn’t easy, to date I’ve only seen one example that I’d say could stand up to repeat viewings and that’s Diary of the Dead (although I’ve yet to test that theory). Welcome to the Jungle doesn’t even pass muster first time out and I doubt I’ll ever feel the compunction to give it a second chance.
Horror and Western film buff, Marvel comic geek, music lover and occasional gamer. 