Welcome to the Jungle

In 2004 Jonathan Hensleigh made The Punisher, a brutal flick that had some following. Jonathan thought to pick in on the docu style flicks by making the most shocking of them all, the cannibal script. To add more believability he added some backstory to it. Michael Clark Rockefeller disappeared during an expedition in the Asmat region of southwestern Netherlands New Guinea. His body was never found and it was believed that he was attacked by a crocodile although some say back then in the sixties cannibals were still living in that area.

4 friends are going to do some research towards Rockefeller on the island. Of course things go wrong an they do enter cannibal territory.

The most shocking was Cannibal Holocaust back in 1980. Still up to today people are afraid to watch this gory flick. The problem with Welcome To The Jungle is that they tried to remake Cannibal Holocaust. It failed on all bits. The script is really boring. You have to wait until the last 20 minutes before the cruelty comes in. Before that there is a lot of talking and arguing between the friends. And even when they enter the cannibals it looks ridiculous. It's not by putting some skulls on a rock that you have a cannibal zone.

On the part of the gore what's a natural fact in those kind of movies, well, it's low too. You do see parts of bodies everywhere but nothing is shown on-screen. Maybe the best part is when they discover one of their friend's corpse.

The acting was okay but the script failed on all parts. Guns 'n' Roses Welcome To The Jungle sounds creepier than this flick.

Gore 2/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 2/5 Story 1/5 Comedy 0/5

"Welcome to the Jungle" has nothing to do with the Guns N' Roses song of the same name, but it owes a lot to "The Blair Witch Project." Too bad it has none of the latter's suspense or creativity.

The plot, such as it is, involves two young couples armed with video cameras who set off into the New Guinea jungle to find Michael Rockefeller, heir to the wealthy family, who disappeared on an expedition there in 1961. Reports are that Rockefeller encountered cannibals, and there's no need to post a spoiler here because the developments of this film are pretty obvious from the start. Unfortunately, before those developments actually develop, we are subject to an hour of improvised whining while the four adventurers wander the jungle, oblivious to the danger that the viewer knows awaits them.

The acting is average, the dialogue is banal, and the hand-held camera is a chore to endure. The film lacks scenes of torture — all of it happens off-camera, ironically — but the images of carnage are as gratuitous as you'd expect from Dimension Extreme. It's hard to feel any sympathy for these self-involved tourists once they've made it clear they'd never be welcome at our dinner table.

The only thing "Welcome to the Jungle" has going for it is some impressive photography. Unfortunately, the dessert doesn't justify the main course.

Welcome To The Jungle is a taut, well made, well acted shock 'mockumentary' that might have been considered a groundbreaking classic of exploitation cinema, if it hadn't been for the fact that not one second of it is in any way original. The pace and directorial style is stolen from The Blair Witch Project, whilst the nihilistic plot and certain visuals are taken from the film that inspired Blair Witch, Ruggero Deodato's infamous Cannibal Holocaust. It is hard to admire something that so shamelessly rips off other genre classics, no matter how well put together it is.

Writer/director Jonathan Hensleigh's extremely derivative plot sees two couples (a pair of hedonists, and their more sensible friends) travel to a cannibal infested jungle to try and find the heir to the Rockefeller fortune, who went missing in the area over 40 years earlier. As the going gets tough, tempers become frayed and arguments inevitably break out. But things really go tits up when one of the group angers the locals by pilfering a skull from a native burial site. The extremely miffed gut-munchers stalk the amateur adventurers and teach them not to go messing with their ancestors' remains.

What follows is undeniably tense, occasionally quite nasty, and technically well handled by cast and crew, but I fail to see how the makers of Welcome To The Jungle expected to present this film without criticism. Perhaps, if it had been as unrelentingly harrowing as Cannibal Holocaust (is that even possible?), fans of extreme horror would have forgiven the plagiarism and admired the film's willingness to shock and disgust. But instead, even the nastiest moment in Hensleigh's film, in which one of the victims is shown impaled on a bamboo pole, is a weak copy of a much more disturbing image in Deodato's movie.

Horror fans who have yet to experience the 'delights' of Cannibal Holocaust or the effectively creepy atmosphere of Blair Witch will probably find much to enjoy about Welcome to the Jungle. However, the rest of us will be annoyed by the bare-faced cheek of its makers. To give it a rating any higher than 5/10 just seems wrong.

This must be one of the worst and most annoying mockumentaries ever made....Follow 4 pampered twenty nothings as they quest to find another well to do never was former twenty nothing from 1961 rumored to be in the jungles of New Guinea after crashing off its coast 35 years earlier (or so the premise goes). On their stereotypical shallow "mis"adventure, you have your gun toting towny bandits, your angry bitter meaninglessly antagonizable militia, your sacred burial grounds complete with skulls and dress up skeletons, your creepy random forest dwelling Aussie guy appearing from and disappearing to nowhere warning the characters about said skulls and skeletons, your loin clothed flesh hungry forest locals outfitted with spears, body paint, and bows, and, oh yeah, the best part, your make shift rafts materializing out of nowhere made with no supplies yet seaworthy enough to float them down a river (that looks like a creek in Montana).....Ultimately, the dialog makes no sense and was often difficult to hear (which was a good thing considering the parts you can hear). The "home" video camera stylings fall apart almost immediately and watching becomes a chore. It was understood that this was low low low budget movie, but this was an absolute horror to watch.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Four goof balls go in search of Micheal Rockefeller, long presumed dead when he disappeared while on an expedition in Southwestern New Guinea, in hopes of getting a huge payday after they locate and interview the now legendary figure. They find that the locals are less than hospitable to put it mildly. The also must contend with petty bickering....A LOT of petty bickering.

In my opinion, the best films on the subject of cannibal natives are of the grind-house potboiler Italian variety. Movies such as Cannibal Ferox, Jungle Holocaust, and Cannibal Holocaust are extremist fare that any true horror buff can sink their teeth into. This film, on the other hand, while obviously hoping to capture the same unrelenting mood of said movies, can't help but come up short.That in and of itself is really not that surprising as even going into "Welcome to the Jungle" I pretty much knew that it wouldn't compare favorably to those infamous gore drenched films of yesteryear. Instead I decided to give it a chance on the sole reason that I like Jonathan Hensleigh's work for the most part. And while i couldn't really get behind this movie as I found too many parts of it outright boring thanks to severely under-developed characters. It's a bit too much build up for not enough payoff. Still, there ARE worse films out there and one could definitely feel that if the movie were in less capable hands that it would be much MUCH worse.

My Grade: C-

DVD Extras: Commentary by writer/director Jonathan Hensleigh; a 15 and a half minute Making of; a deleted scene with optional commentary; promo trailer for this film; and trailers for "the Mist", the atrocious "Halloween" remake; "1408"; "Black Sheep" & "Broken"