How smart does it sound to follow a random Austrian you met in the streets of a rural Bolivian town deep into the jungle, looking for gold and secret native tribes? How weird is it to then start calling him Papa? Horror director Greg McLean’s survival film Jungle begins with a trio of young travelers making these questionable decisions. Based on the memoir by Israeli Yossi Ghinsberg, the overlong film struggles to merge its first and second halves into a cohesive whole. And although Justin Monjo’s script allows for plenty of time to develop a rapport between its characters, it’s focused entirely on Yossi, biding its time until things take a turn for the worse in the Amazon jungle. The script problems only mount when the film’s second half fails to fully impress upon the audience the agony of Yossi’s struggle. While the structure of the film hinders its success, McLean’s directing shines in moments of suspense and gore – as expected – and Daniel Radcliffe as Yossi commits himself physically to the role, perhaps beyond what is even required.
While Radcliffe fudges an Israeli accent to play Yossi, he fully captures the wide-eyed enthusiasm the 21-year-old explorer had when he embarked on a South American journey. Arriving in La Paz, Bolivia in 1981, his Yossi meets fellow travelers Kevin (Alex Russell) and Marcus (Joel Johnson), an American photographer whose overconfidence borders on arrogance and a meek Swiss teacher, respectively. The trio plan to backpack together, but their plans are derailed when Yossi meets Karl (Thomas Kretschmann), an Austrian stranger who introduces himself as a jungle guide. Yossi is drawn in by Karl’s talk of untouched jungle, rich gold panning and hidden native tribes; he convinces the others to join him, and they set about purchasing supplies for a long trek. Only about a week into their journey, Marcus struggles to keep up, slowed down by the aching cuts in his feet. Yossi and Kevin turn on Marcus, questioning why such an inexperienced hiker would come into the jungle in the first place. Against Karl’s advice, they leave Karl and Marcus to travel on foot while they brave the faster route: the river.
Even though McLean and Monjo devote almost an hour to this traveling group, the characters largely remain rooted in their simple descriptors. The bond between Yossi, Kevin and Marcus still seems like one of convenience, which at least makes their contentious falling out more realistic. But when Yossi and Kevin’s makeshift raft falls apart in the river rapids and they are separated, Yossi’s survival depends upon his own skill and the hope that Kevin will rescue him. Early on in the film, the trio are lightening their packs down to the essentials. Yossi pulls out a token from his uncle that allegedly kept him safe, until he passed it on to Yossi and proceeded to die the next day. It’s a good luck charm, and when he’s lost in the jungle Yossi reminds himself that he is “the luckiest man in the world” and will survive as long as he holds on to this token. But since this is Yossi’s story and not Kevin’s, although Kevin has written about his experiences too, the latter’s near-death experience is completely glossed over. Conveniently washing up in a jungle village safe from harm, Kevin seems more like the lucky one, free to become the brave savior.
In translating Yossi’s terrifying experience to the screen, McLean relishes action sequences that see the character losing his way in the pounding rain only to fall into a sinking mud pit, cut open his forehead to dig out burrowing leeches or get bitten by hundreds of fire ants. It’s the events in between these harrowing scenes that diffuse the visceral agony of Yossi’s experience. Naturally, spending three weeks in the Amazon jungle struggling to survive will do a number on your faculties, but Monjo not only illustrates this mental deterioration with jungle hallucinations but also with unnecessary flashbacks to Yossi’s life before this trek. In scenes like the ones involving beautiful butterflies – first swirling around a happy Yossi as Kevin snaps pictures, and then representing hope when he is starving in the jungle – McLean clearly wants to encourage a triumph of the will narrative alongside Jungle’s terrifying exploits; the dichotomy of gruesome survival and miraculous endurance, however, struggles to find a balance.
Whereas Jungle could have emphasized Yossi’s psychological deterioration, this is a story of total physical demise. McLean’s unrelenting slog of a film certainly makes those three weeks in the jungle feel all the more potent, but it sorely lacks momentum. There is merit in structurally mimicking the monotony, but Jungle would have been better served by shaving off about 30 minutes.
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