Australia, Colombia · 2017
Rated R · 1h 55m
Director Greg McLean
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Thomas Kretschmann, Alex Russell, Joel Jackson
Genre Adventure, Drama, Thriller
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In 1981, an enthusiastic young adventurer follows his dreams into the Bolivian Amazon jungle with two friends and a guide with a mysterious past. Their journey quickly turns into a terrifying ordeal as the darkest elements of human nature and the deadliest threats of the wilderness lead to an all-out fight for survival.
The fundamental intensity of Ghinsberg’s story is hard to totally squander. When it doesn’t give in to the desire to be a more traditional crowd-pleaser, Jungle provides a graphic and unvarnished account of a genuinely incredible story.
While the horror director successfully distills Ghinsberg’s spare prose into a succession of terrifying images, McLean can’t seem to help straying into the tackier elements of horror.
Madness is difficult to convey on screen, and less is often more. McLean opts for most, sacrificing Radcliffe performance — so alert and responsive that you can feel the life draining out of his body once the Amazon takes hold — at the altar of some empty affectations.
Taut and rattling in setup, before losing its bearings in more ways than one as no end of jungle fever seizes Daniel Radcliffe’s agonized protagonist.
Slant Magazine by Henry Stewart
Greg McLean and screenwriter Justin Monjo faithfully hit the key plot points of Yossi Ghinsberg's 1993 book Back from Tuichi but fail to sell the severity of the threats Yossi confronts.
Radcliffe menaced by a hostile bush is far more entertaining as innuendo than actual drama. What might have been Deliverance in the tropics is rather a Dan versus wilderness yarn.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Slow to get moving and dramatically slack, Jungle cares only about Yossi, whose solo suffering and speed-enhanced hallucinations dominate the narrative.
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
Despite the considerable physicality of the movie, with its impressive cinematography and Radcliffe’s believable, all-in disintegration, it’s more earthbound slog than psychological deep-dive.
There’s not much new here, but it’s as engrossing as the better entries in this formulaic quest and that’s largely owing to [Radcliffe’s] charisma and focused self-martyrdom.
RogerEbert.com by Vikram Murthi
Jungle succeeds in communicating the young Israeli kid’s horrible situation, as well as the camaraderie between him and his new friends, but falls short when trying to visually explicate his mental state.
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