Available at Amazon.com
Director
Jonathan Hensleigh
Cast
Sandi Gardiner – Mandi
Callard Harris – Colby
Nickolas Richey – Mickey
Veronica Sywak – Bijou
Release Date: November 13th
Running Time: 83 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
The Movie
They say, “Never judge a book by its cover.” The same can be said for DVDs. The front of this movie says “Quite possibly the most terrifying film of the last decade.” Ummmm…no, it’s not.
The story follows four young people in Fiji. They’ve heard stories their entire lives about Michael Rockefeller’s mysterious disappearance into cannibal territory, and how even the most costly manhunt in US history failed to find him. But these four know better than that, and they have a rock solid story from some guy at a bar who knows another guy who saw a white man living with cannibals as he flew over. Never mind for a second that there are a good 500 million white guys on the planet and how are they sure it’s Rockefeller, but they heard the story from a drunk guy at a bar, not exactly the best source for solid information.
But like any good horror film leads, they decide to go into the forest to try and find Rockefeller and interview him for a article they’re sure they can sell for a million dollars. Bijou (Veronica Sywak) even says what the audience is thinking, “How do we know he even wants to be found, and would even do the interview? It’s too risky to go into cannibal territory for a not sure thing.” But of course, a forth of a million dollars, 250,000 is enough to convince her that its worth it.
So off to the Jungle they go, complete with the obligatory “Welcome to the Jungle” line as they walk into the jungle. The first half of the movie is basically an episode of “The Real World” with the four dividing into two couples and conflict coming up between the two groups, leading to one group stealing the camera and heading up river to their demise. Only to be followed by the second group, to their demise.
I’ll give the actors some credit, horror movies are some of the hardest movies to act in, because fear is possibly the hardest emotion to fake. But for two-thirds of the film they aren’t trying to act scared and its purely setting up the rift between the two couples and you can genuinely feel the dislike between them. But once they’re called upon to act scared you lose a good portion of believability. The camera gives an assist to believing the animosity between the couples, as the movie is shot in Blair Witch Project style, and for almost the entire film you wonder whether or not it’s a documentary or a purely fictional film.
Which leads to the second set of credit I’ll give, who ever did the make-up for this movie, deserves a raise. When I see a pole going through a girls head that she’s hanging by, and five minutes later I see a guy with his arms and legs chopped off, and I’m still left wondering if it’s a documentary or a fictional film, someone is doing something right. And in this case, it’s the make up artist.
A/V Quality
The volume is quiet and muffled when they’re sitting around the campfire but it kind of plays into the group hatred feel. The video misses things due to being shot with essentially a free hand camera. It makes it feel more real, but it doesn’t add to the horror of the film.
Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound
Special Features
Commentary with the Director – Pretty good, Hensleigh talks about the actors ad-libbing and how the shots were set up. Standard stuff but not bad.
A making-of piece that shows you that a lot of the movie was actually ad-libbed.
1 deleted scene
The Inside Pulse
The bastard child of The Blair Witch Project except without anything remotely horrifying and The Real World fails miserably. If you’re a huge fan of the real world, and you don’t want to be scared, by all means this is the movie for you. If you’re a teenage boy trying to score a hottie, this is NOT the way to go.
