Starring: Sandi Gardiner, Veronica Sywak, Callard Harris, Nick Richey
Director: Jonathan Hensleigh
2007 | 83 Minutes
“So, we gonna do this or what? – Mikey
Synopsis:
Two young couples head into the New Guinea jungle in search of Michael Rockefeller, the heir to the Rockefeller fortune who went missing in 1961.
I think I am starting to get a bit picky about the found footage movies I actually want to watch. I am STARTING to get sick of aliens, demons and ghosts. So a movie like Welcome to the Jungle, dealing with jungle cannibals sounded like a great change of pace.
Welcome to the Jungle follows the classic found footage formula. Dumb kids doing dumb things get into trouble and (SPOILER!!!) get killed. The characters are ALL obnoxious and unlikeable. All of them. They are totally unprepared for any amount of time in the jungle, much less this sort of crazy trip. It makes it really hard to feel any sympathy/empathy/whatever for these characters that are grating to watch on camera, purposely put themselves in a HUGELY dangerous situation and entered that situation without the proper preparation and equipment.
Just to break this down a little further for you… One couple is that annoying couple that is always horsing around, never able to take anything seriously – often while drunk or high. The other couple is that annoying couple that used to be super fun to be around but have since forgotten how to have fun. They’ve become so stuck on their own mission that they would leave their friends to die. Who am I supposed to root for in this scenario? The cannibals I suppose. They’ve gotta eat.
And after putting up with these grating personalities we don’t get a good enough payoff to have made this journey all worthwhile. It’s just a really unsatisfying ending, though SPOILER!!! there is a slight twist.
There just isn’t much reason to recommend Welcome to the Jungle unless you are a real glutton for punishment like I am.
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