Jungle Run (2021) poster

Jungle Run (2021)

Rating:


USA. 2021.

Crew

Director/Photography – Noah Luke, Screenplay – Marc Gottlieb, Producer – David Michael Latt, Music – Mikel Shane Prather, Visual Effects Supervisor – Glenn Campbell, Production Design – Alexandra Regazzoni. Production Company – The Asylum.

Cast

Alyson Gorske (Amanda Kirin), Wade Williams (Captain Lebecq), Jack Pearson (Scott Kirin), Jamie Petitto (Vera Ortek), Richard Grieco (Professor Nicholas Kirin), Benjamin Bernard (Sark), Chris De Jesus (Teese), Rey’von Miller (Blind Man)


Plot

In Manaus, Brazil, Amanda Kirin hires the services of riverboat captain Leclerq to take her and her brother Scott up the Amazon in search of their missing father. Also hiring Leclerq’s services at the same time is their father’s employer Vera Ortek. They set out, beset along the way by killer frogs, piranha, giant snakes and capture by natives. They venture into the territory where they believe that their father may travelled in search of the legendary Sem Saeda and have stirred up the legendary Curupira monster.


The Asylum is a company regularly produce low-budget films designed to copy the titles of big-budget releases and are released just as the other work comes out to capitalise on publicity and anticipated interest – something they call ‘mockbusters’. The Asylum’s mockbusters have included copycat titles such as The Da Vinci Treasure (2006), Snakes on a Train (2006), AVH: Alien vs Hunter (2007), The Hitchhiker (2007), I Am Omega (2007), Transmorphers (2007), Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls (2008), The Day the Earth Stopped (2008), 100 Million BC (2008), Sunday School Musical (2008), The 18 Year Old Virgin (2009), Almighty Thor (2011), Battle of Los Angeles (2011), Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies (2012) and Age of the Hobbits (2012). (For a more detailed list see Mockbusters).

In this case, Jungle Run was made as a mockbuster copy of the Disney film Jungle Cruise (2021) that was based on the Disney theme park ride. The Asylum’s film went into release about a month before Jungle Cruise. The plots between the two films have a reasonable similarity – both have the central trio of characters of the grizzled riverboat captain, the fiercely determined heroine and her frequently useless brother on a cruise up the Amazon amid encounters with the usual stock menaces of the Adventure Film. The plot here gets the addition of a morally ambiguous business owner and has the raison d’etre of a missing father rather than the search for a mythical tree.

I enjoyed Jungle Run far more than I was expecting to, especially given The Asylum’s low-budget ways of making movies and penchant for corner-cutting. For one, the film makes the jungle adventure look reasonable on an economy budget despite locations that have never travelled anywhere beyond Myakka State Park in Florida. The Asylum’s visual effects are getting better with each film they put out and there are some not bad scenes here with the party having to navigate their way through a nest of crocodiles – although the giant snake and giant spiders that turn up later in the show are down at a more ropy level. There is the odd scene that makes you sit back and go “okkkkay!” – like the attack by coloured frogs that ends with Wade Williams with his leg poisoned, screaming “cut it off.”

Alyson Gorske in Jungle Run (2021)
Alyson Gorske as Amanda Kirin

The other plus is that the film comes with a decent cast. Alyson Gorske, who has appeared in several other films from The Asylum, plays the lead role with a fierce determination that makes an undeniable imprint on the film. Wade Williams, who is actually an actor from Los Angeles, plays through some unidentifiable accent where you cannot decide if it is meant to be German or South African. That said, he gives a reasonable airing of the grizzled riverboat captain role – the sort of part the one in Jungle Cruise should have been before it was subverted by Dwayne Johnson’s cartoonish presence.

Jungle Run’s only recognisable name is former teen star Richard Grieco. I remembered seeing his name on the opening credits but reached the end of the film and wondered where he was before going back to realise that he’d played the unrecognisable long-haired and bearded father who spends most of the film poring over the statuette that has glowing green crystal eyes.

Noah Luke had previously worked for The Asylum as a cinematographer. He subsequently went on to direct Attack on Titan (2022), Battle for Pandora (2022), Moon Crash (2022), Thor: God of Thunder (2022) and Doomsday Meteor (2023) for them.


Trailer here


Director:
Actors: , , , , , , ,
Category:
Themes: , , , ,