Having bought its DVD a few hours earlier that same day from a local shop, on 17 January 2022 I watched the recent creature feature Jungle Run, from The Asylum's prolific stable of such flicks.
Directed by Noah Luke, and released in 2021, Jungle Run stars Richard Grieco, and is all about two young adults, Amanda (played by Alyson Gorske) and Scott (Jack Pearson) – aided and abetted by a motley boat crew led by their captain/jungle guide, Lebecq (Wade Hunt Williams) – who are seeking their lost archaeologist father Nicholas (Richard Grieco). And so with intrepid determination, they journey boldly along the Amazon river (but actually filmed in Florida's Everglades) and bravely through the unexplored depths of the Amazon rainforest (actually Florida's Myakka River State Park), where every creature seems oddly but unnervingly hell-bent upon killing them!
To be fair, and cryptozoologists in particular take note here, this movie does feature some hugely entertaining monsters (with the emphasis definitely on huge!). These include several human-swallowing giant anacondas, humungous tree-dwelling spiders that drop down onto their unsuspecting human victims below with disconcerting accuracy, a massive killer vine tree that lassos its victims with lethal lianas, and gargantuan Venus flytraps that put Audrey II to shame (click here if that last comparison eludes you!).
Nor should we omit to mention a colossal shoal of uncommonly bloodthirsty piranhas that even strip off the wood and steel from the bottom of the boat ferrying their human targets in their frenzied attempts to tear them apart, plus a veritable army of small but deadly arrow-poison frogs that do their best to bite and bedevil them like a pack of chomping chihuahuas.
Biggest and most belligerent of all, however, is the rainforest's enormous and highly antagonistic guardian, the curupira – portrayed here as a monstrous humanoid reptilian entity with a big flaming head (literally!) who is not best pleased with humanity's continuing deforestation onslaughts, and has therefore turned all of the forest's wildlife murderously against them. There is also some interwoven supernatural hokum surrounding a mysterious glowing-green crystalline rock known to the rainforest's tribes as the Heart of the Jungle, which holds the key to the potency of the curupira.
Overall, however, the plot is very predictable – in time-honoured monster movie tradition, one by one the secondary characters all get picked off via a diversity of different but no less dramatic means by the assorted terrors that await on and in the Amazon, until only the principal ones remain standing (just!). In short, exactly what we would – and all that we should – expect from such a movie.
Equally, Asylum's CGI monsters, while more than adequate, do not compare to those created by bigger film companies (a common criticism aimed at Asylum by its critics and detractors). But, again to be fair, neither does the special-effects budget that it can afford. Consequently, imho it does very well with what funds it can employ.
Having said that, however, I do feel obliged to say to those viewers expecting to encounter in this movie the spectacular Angkor Wat-like ancient palace depicted on its UK DVD's cover – stop expecting, because said palace doesn't appear in it, anywhere, at any time, ever (unless I watched an edited version?).
Notwithstanding this notable non-appearance, however, as a major fan of the creature feature subgenre of B-movies I thoroughly enjoyed Jungle Run, as indeed I do with most of Asylum's often unfairly denigrated monster movies. So if you'd like to know more about it, be sure to click here to watch an official Jungle Run trailer on YouTube.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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