Truly Dreadful Film

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Two young couples venture into the New Guinea wilderness in search of Michael Rockefeller, the heir to the Rockefeller fortune who disappeared back in 1961. Naturally, our group runs afoul of a hostile cannibal tribe. Writer/director Jonathan Hensleigh crucially fails to generate any essential tension or momentum while the now hackneyed found footage premise covers too familiar territory in a bland and uninspired way. Moreover, the ponderous build-up proves to be a rather tedious chore to endure, with a belated pay-off that doesn't deliver the gruesome goods abundantly enough to be worth all the effort to get to it. Worst of all, the four protagonists are remarkably irritating and unlikable; their constant bickering and idiotic antics get extremely tiresome super fast and make it impossible for the viewer to care about what happens to them. Sandy Gardiner, Callard Harris, Nick Richey, and Veronica Sywak all contribute credible naturalistic performances, but are unable to make their obnoxious characters even remotely interesting or sympathetic. Only some decent gore, the gorgeous tropical scenery, and the effective hand-held cinematography by Hensleigh and John Leonetti prevent this picture from being a total wash-out. A merely passable time-killer, but it could and should have been a lot better.

Welcome to the Jungle starts in Fiji where newlywed couple Mandi (Sandy Gardiner) & Colby (Callard Harris) are enjoying their honeymoon, they meet up with old friends Bijou (Veronica Sywak) & Mikey (Nick Richey) who decide to get together. The two couples remember the story about Michael Rockefeller mysteriously disappearing off the coast of New Guinea in 1961, they recount stories of a helicopter pilot seeing an old white man living with a native tribe in the jungle & the two couples feel certain it's the missing Rockefeller. Sensing they could earn an absolute fortune if they do find him the two couples decide to travel to New Guinea & try to locate Rockefeller, the task turns out to be anything but easy as they have to deal with armed robbers, violent locals whom dislike Americans, unforgiving jungle terrain & hungry native cannibals...Not to be confused with the sometimes similarly titled action film starring The Rock this was co-photographed, written & directed by Jonathan Hensleigh who has written some really heavy weight Hollywood scripts including Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) & Armageddon (1998) this seems a rather odd choice of film for him to be involved with, anyway I can't say I particularly liked it that much but strangely by the end I was warming to the style & the story. Lasting just under 80 minutes Welcome to the Jungle is a rip-off of The Blair Witch Project (1999) with it's 'found footage' recorded by those no longer with us structure, it's odd because many say that The Blair Witch Project was a rip-off of Cannibal Holocaust (1980) which it was to some extent so for this film to introduce cannibals in the jungle as it's main plot feels strange to me. All of Welcome to the Jungle is 'found footage' so we get really bad edits all over the place where people are cut off, scenes begin & end abruptly & while I am sure that the makers were trying to make it look & feel as homemade as possible it gets incredibly irritating. The idea that these four friends would trek through some really dangerous New Guinea jungle on the off chance they might find Michael Rockefeller is a stretch to say the least, I mean if one of the richest men in the US couldn't find him what makes them think they can? The mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller is true by the way, nothing else in Welcome to the Jungle is though. A large problem with Welcome to the Jungle is that the four main character's spend the vast majority of the film arguing & bickering which gets annoying, I did start to get into the film a bit by the end & was getting used to the style but that's about the best thing I can say about it.Because of the 'found footage' nature of Welcome to the Jungle it's an absolute eyesore to sit through, there are times when the screen is pitch black & we just hear what's going on, there are times when the camera jerks around all over the place & the editing feels strange as well. I know it's meant to have the look of a homemade film but it just gets irritating & annoying to watch. There's barely any gore, a few dead bodies & a weaker take on one of Cannibal Holocaust's iconic imagery. Despite being about cannibals I can't remember any actual on screen cannibalism & it's really tame. Certainly not worthy of an 'Unrated' release, it was released as a soft '15' over here in the UK. The only thing that works in the films favour are the locations which are very authentic looking, very isolated & seem pretty dangerous & remote but that's not enough to save the film.Apparently filmed entirely in Fiji the film looks like what the makers intended, it's just that I don't particularly like this style of filmmaking & think it looks cheap. The acting is alright, the actor's have no material to work with apart from 'argue about this' dialogue.Welcome to the Jungle is probably about as good as the makers could have pulled off with what they were trying to do but I dislike the whole 'found footage' genre which doesn't help, neither does the fact that there's no cannibalism or proper gore or shock's in it. Not my cup of tea at all.

This film was not the worst i have ever seen, but any worse and it would have been a real test to make it through the entire movie. Although the director Jonathan Hensleigh is by no means one of my favourite directors i find it hard to believe he wrote die hard with a vengeance and jumanji for example, both action movies that although he didn't direct were full of exciting and very creative ideas. What happened! The characters in this film were so easily dislikable with their endless bickering and one-up-man-ship that their downfall couldn't come fast enough for me. If they portrayed any character i would have been happy to sit for longer and wait for it to appear, but it was like the script was produced by a teenager with an attitude problem. All the main characters were obnoxious and self centred. You may argue that this was to an extent, partly at least the point of the film? like cannibal holocaust and others in same elk which portrayed the white people from privileged backgrounds were actually more sinister and barbaric than the characters who ate humans in the jungle, maybe the idea was that these the main charters were more hateful than the cannibals? Either way, i would argue you could have dealt with that potential idea far quicker and stopped wasting time. I don't know, just not my thing and like other have mentioned it obviously tried to live up to the old classic cannibal films and failed almost before it had started.

I sat down and watched this atrocity of a film the other day, and I was utterly disappointed. Many people have praised this movie, and when I watched it, all I could think of was "Cannibal Holocaust". Hell, from the opening scenes, the camcorder approach was identical, even before the guys and girls went into the jungle where the copy gets even more pronounced. I was especially perturbed by the impaled woman that was present in both films, but was used much more effectively in the 1970's Cannibal Holocaust than in this pile of crap.While the unfortunate use of live animals in Cannibal Holocaust is horrible and should never be repeated, the overall impact of that film cannot be denied. That film gets a 7 out of 10, while this one gets a generous 3. Save your money and buy Blue Underground's DVD of Cannibal Holocaust, that way you can watch the original with the animal bits removed instead of a mediocre re-make.