Feast your eyes on this
Written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh.
AKA
Germany: Cannibals – Welcome to the Jungle
Starts in Suva, Fiji. Mandi (Sandi Gardiner), Bijou (Veronica Sywak), Colby (Callard Harris) and Mikey (Nick Richey) go in search of Michael Rockefeller with the intention of interviewing him for a million bucks.
They sail across to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, home of the infamous Raskol gangs. They attempt to cross the Indonesian border but they run into trouble with some guards so they continue on to the Irian Jaya highlands on foot.
“Welcome to the jungle.”
Bijou
They run into a couple of missionaries along the way. Later they find some tribal gravesites and dick around, taking a skull. They meet an Australian man who lives in the area, he tells them if the people there catch them they will kill them. The relationship between the two couples; Mandi and Colby and Bijou and Mikey; is already strained and Bijou and Mikey take off on a raft.
Eventually Mandi and Colby go after them on their own raft.
I really like this film. Now, I don’t like Cannibal Holocaust (1980); if you’re going to torture and kill animals for your crappy movie, don’t blame people for despising it; so I have no loyalty to Cannibal Holocaust. Yes, it was the original found footage film and yes this does rip ideas straight out of it but I will not defend sick garbage. What this film at least does is offer an alternative to Cannibal Holocaust that people like myself can enjoy; I think the whole cannibal thing is great horror fare (minus actual cruelty) and Welcome to the Jungle is proof of that.
The atmosphere is potent. It’s very nicely shot making the cannibals and indeed the locations genuinely creepy. The main four cast members apparently improvised all their lines as there was no script involved; I didn’t find them particularly likeable but they came across as real enough. The aftermath of a road accident seen in the film was real; not gory, just eerie, just a nice touch. That’s what I really liked, it feels real, although I was shaking my head at the four people some of the time, but mainly because they were such tools (in a real way though).
Gore? Watch it yourself. Don’t start going on about the gore in Cannibal Holocaust. Just watch it as its own film, as difficult as that might be. I’ll say, I found it disturbing, in a quiet, understated way. There, now go watch it.
