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You know what five words I hate seeing in film taglines?

Based. On. A. True. Story.

Here's the thing about such a phrase: it instantly tells you that whatever you're going to see is a) within the realm of physical possibility and b) results in your lead surviving. Now granted, the true story in this case is actually pretty fascinating, but still...if you tell me it's based on reality, I watch the whole film with the preordained disappointment that no aliens or unicorns will appear. What an immediate letdown.

Quick Plot: Having finished his service in the Israeli army, young Yossi decides to travel the world and avoid a life of expected responsibility. While backpacking through South America, he befriends the adventurous Swede Marcus, his American photographer pal Kevin, and a mysterious Austrian named Karl begging to be their Amazon jungle tour guide.

Once they're deep into the wilderness, it doesn't take long for dissension to strike amongst the team. Marcus proves too weak to handle the trek, while the self-proclaimed expert Karl turns out to be a fraud who can't even swim. Since rafting down some wild rapids is the fastest way out before the rainy season strikes, this poses a problem.

Marcus and Karl decide to slowly hike back together. Kevin and Yossi begin their water trail only to immediately be separated by the raging waters. The film (mostly) then follows Yossi as he battles the elements.

And my, what elements they are! Fire ants, gooey quicksand, worms that somehow lodge themselves on the east side of Harry Potter's scar, you name it. While Jungle wouldn't particularly fall into the category of horror movie, it does occasionally tilt its hand to have been directed by Wolf Creek's Greg McLean.

Jungle is based on the real Yossi Ghinsberg's experience in the wild (and also dramatized in a 2005 episode of Discovery's I Shouldn't Be Alive!, a show whose title exclamation point can never not make me think of the glory that is I Don't Want To Be Born). The story itself is genuinely incredible, and it's a wonder it took 40 years to make its way to the big screen.

At the same time, it kind of worked better in hourlong documentary form.

The biggest problem with Jungle is that it simply doesn't trust its source material enough to be its own movie. For a good half hour, we're following Yossi without any influence of the outside world. It's riveting, capturing the real horrors of being truly alone in the heart of the wilderness. 

So why cut away and show Kevin getting help from a nearby village?

McLean, or his script, also toy with Yossi's mental setting, flashing back to his family strife before he left to travel. It's the same issue I had with Danny Boyle's celebrated 127 Hours: the reason these survival stories fascinated the world is because it's truly incredible to imagine what a person can do to make it through such an ordeal. Sure, there's an argument to be made for how your past might affect your current situation, but it's such a trite, standard movie trick that sucks all the true tension out of scrounging for birds' eggs and fighting snakes. 

High Points

Hey, you film a survival movie in a wilderness filled with rapids and greenery and the occasional stock image of a fuzzy spider and you'll have an audience impressed

Low Points

Daniel Radcliffe is the other best part of Jungle, so it's one of those things I just can't acknowledge: the actor clearly gave this his all, putting his body through an intense regime and losing dozens of pounds...for this?

Lessons Learned

Monkey meat is positively delicious

Nothing can change a person's mind with quite as much efficiency as a pack of fire ants

Amazonian snakes are surprisingly easy to handle, even on an empty stomach

Rent/Bury/Buy

Argh. Jungle isn't a bad movie, but it just feels like a story that deserved a better telling. You can find it on Amazon Prime...where you can also find the I Shouldn't Be Alive episode.

That's Alotta Monkeys!

I wasn’t expecting The Woman In Black to qualify for The Shortening, but here I go out to the theaters on Friday night like any old civilian and what do I get?

Creepy kids

Antique dolls

5’6 leading men

Monkeys shaking maracas

Insert press tag on hat and venture forth!

Quick Plot: A silent prologue follows three precious Victorian girls having a tea party with an assortment of horrifically wrong-looking dolls. Oh, and that’s not even the freaky part. Without a word, the triplets arise to leap out the window.

Credits!

Flashing forward to the movie’s later Victorian present, the widowed lawyer Arthur Kips (Radcliffe) is heading on a business trip from his young son. WIth his career in jeopardy, Arhur heads to a far-off marshy town where all the locals spout ominous warnings about the abandoned home Kips will have to enter.

It’s not easy. Arthur’s late clients lived in a mansion across the village with the route dependent upon the marshy tide. Years earlier, their young son drowned in a tragic carriage accident. Ever since, the town has seen a rash of mysterious child deaths--suicides, perhaps--and the legend of the titular Lady In White--

Damnit. You know what I meant.

Kips does his best to sift through mounds of paperwork amid the eerie house noises, but once the nursery’s menagerie of music boxes, clowns with cymbals, and monkeys--so many, many monkeys--gets partying, it’s hard to ignore the whole “this house is haunted by dead children and the really pissed off woman that killed them” thing.

On hand to help is Julius Caesar himself, Ciaran Hinds as Daily, a wealthy local mourning the death of his own long-lost son. Skeptical of superstitions, Daily cares for his crazy-with-grief wife who sometimes channels the lost spirit of their child.

Between medium sessions, fog-covered cemeteries, and Changeling-ish wheelchairs, The Woman In Black is an enthusiastically hard-working film. Director James Watkins embraces the Hammer mystique full-force, never winking at the audience or downplaying the fairly horrific dead child weight that hangs on so many key scenes. It’s an important choice because unlike so many other ghost stories that seem so pent on righting the original wrong, The Woman In Black isn’t necessarily satisfied by sympathy.

One local girl drinks poison while another burns to death in a fire. Like an Elm Street without telephones for tongues to stick out of, this is not the place to be if you’re under 18.

And that’s easily one of the most effective tricks of the very effective Woman In Black. Arthur is sympathetic enough as a sad widower trying to hold it together for his son, but it’s more the idea that this unlucky town’s youth is constantly at risk whenever a stranger dares to stir its eternal ghost that really makes the film something sorta dangerous.

High Points

Amid dead little girls and suicidal mad women, it’s nice to find some surprisingly witty moments of humor lurking inside The Woman In Black. The jokes never detract from the scares but help to keep us amused by the characters for whose souls we’re already fearing

SPOILER ALERT!

I absolutely adored the ending of The Woman In Black. On one hand, it didn’t wimp out with a happy Hollywood sing-off. At the same time, it wasn’t mean in scope. Yes, Arthur and his cherubic lil artist of a son do die—in what we imagine is a pretty gruesome manner—but they do so together, sparing either any further loss. It’s kind of bittersweet

THUS ENDETH SPOILERS 

Low Points

Ahhh, the plight of modern genre cinema sound design and its increasing predicatbility. There are a good dozen or so jump scares staged with perfect visual punch, but just about every one is heralded with ham-fisted music that kills its effectiveness

Old Habits

Although a few grays too young for the role, Daniel Radcliffe acquits himself quite well to his first major non-Harry Potter performance. It’s my fault entirely that I found myself constantly wondering how he could sort through all those documents without the aid of his wizard glasses

Lessons Learned

If dispatched to a haunted house on a job that will either make or destroy your career, quit dilly dallying with ghost hunting and get to the paperwork already

Postal workers are and have always been lazy jerks

When in doubt, cut to a monkey doll

If you're name is Daniel Radcliffe, don't ever take a train. Seriously kid, it's just irresponsible at this point

See/Skip/Sneak In

I liked The Woman In Black far more than I expected I would. That being said, this isn’t a revolutionary genre film—if anything, it’s decidedly Hammer and old-fashioned—and will probably be just as enjoyable at home with the lights off, where you don’t have to worry about cell phone jingles or popcorn crunching. I’d love to see the film do well in theaters if only to support this kind of moviemaking, but it opened to better-than-expected numbers so if you want to save your Alexander Hamilton for half the DVD in a few months, I won’t come back and tell your children to off themselves. That’s just tacky.