Jungle
2017 · Directed by Greg McLean
Original language: English
- adventure
- thriller
The story
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.
What it’s like
Humid green overexposure and sweat-slick close-ups dominate this survival story, with the Bolivian rainforest rendered as a dense, sticky maze of canopy, brown rivers and drifting mist. Its palette is saturated and muddy, shifting to hot daylight haze and then to disorienting, fevered dusk, and the camera stays tight and handheld on faces and hands, so the wilderness presses in. Sound does much of the work: insects, rushing water and cracking undergrowth fill the frame, punctuated by a driving, percussive score that surges during panic. The vibe is feverish, claustrophobic adventure with a strain of dark comedy in its bickering male camaraderie, best suited to a restless evening when you want to be pulled hard into the wild. Pacing is brisk and escalating, with long stretches of tense travel broken by sudden jolts. Violence is present and occasionally graphic: there are injuries, a few sharp bursts of gore and frightening moments of cruelty and betrayal, with dread more prominent than sustained brutality. It is not gentle. The people's arcs trace a fraying friendship and a slide from youthful bravado into raw, desperate survival, for viewers who enjoy adventure thrillers about human fragility under nature's pressure.
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