There’s something lovable about a micro-budget shot-on-video movie that, nevertheless, is ambitious when it comes to production.
It’s not merely set in cheap apartments, parking lots and the coffee shop managed by one of the director’s friends. Maybe instead it’s set in outer space or in 1752 or, in the case of James Bryan’s little horror story here, the South American jungle. Bryan’s jungle is made up of stock footage, a few trees and what looks like a decent amount of house plants. Works for me.
Bryan completed shooting in 1990, but stalled out in post-production. The movie sat in a box in his house for twenty-five years until the fine people at Bleeding Skull learned about it while talking to him about a whole other project. Bryan handed Jungle Trap over to them to finish (all it needed was some editing and music). They did it and now the 2010s get some fresh analog videotape action all up in its face. I can’t call the movie a buried treasure, but it has some likable loony moments across its story of First World interlopers who get killed one-by-one by a vengeful primitive tribe. Highlights include the world’s drunkest airplane pilot, the world’s creepiest bellhop, a terrific new synth-heavy score by Taken by Savages and a few people who lose their heads.