With a resume boasting horror projects like Rogue, The Belko Experiment, The Darkness, and the ever growing and expanding Wolf Creek franchise, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that Greg McLean’s latest film, Jungle, represents a major shifting of the director’s creative gears. “It’s a film built on its characters, like all of my films have been,” McLean tells FilmInk on the line from the states, where he’s been doing press for the imminent release of Jungle, “so I don’t really see it as a major detour. I’m really attracted to all different kinds of stories. I didn’t see it as being that far outside my comfort zone.”
The film is, however, undeniably different to McLean’s previous output. Based on the true life book by Yossi Ghinsberg, this tough tale of survival features an on-form Daniel Radcliffe as Ghinsberg, a young backpacker keen for life experience who heads into the Bolivian jungle in search of a lost tribe of Indians, and perhaps a little gold along the way. But once in the wild, Ghinsberg and his equally inexperienced travelling companions quickly realise how all-enveloping and truly dangerous the jungle that surrounds them truly is. But when they become separated, the nightmare truly begins. “Yossi told me that the most terrifying thing was being in the jungle at night,” McLean says. “The level of fear was extraordinary. That’s when all of the predators come out, and the jungle is just filled with the screeching, screaming sounds of animals killing each other. He said it was like someone had suddenly turned a stereo up to fifteen.”
Greg McLean on the set of Jungle.
Yossi Ghinsberg’s story is an extraordinary one, and it had been kicking around as a possible movie project for several years. McLean had heard the rumours of adaptation, but it was the script by Australian writer Justin Monjo (Paper Giants: Magazine Wars, INXS: Never Tear Us Apart) that really put the hook in him. “It was just so compelling,” McLean says. The project threw up an instant new challenge for the director: working on a real life story in which the major players are still alive and kicking. “There’s a whole level of responsibility, planning, and input that doesn’t happen with a regular type of film,” McLean says. “I really wanted it to be authentic, and I wanted to get the details right, down to what people were wearing and what they were eating. There’s a level of documentary-style investigation that goes on when you’re telling a true story. That was unlike anything else that I’d done before.”
From the get-go, McLean brought Yossi Ghinsberg into the project. Based in Australia, the author, adventurer and motivational speaker was invited to fact-check the script, offer his input into how his story was being told, and spend time on the film’s set. Whereas many filmmakers prefer to have their writers and subjects as far away from their project as possible, McLean tapped Ghinsberg as an invaluable resource. “I really felt like I was the servant to his story,” the director explains. “I really tried to involve Yossi as much as possible, and he was particularly useful to the actors. Daniel and he formed a really strong relationship, and Daniel just wanted to know everything about him at the time of the events of the film, right down to what music he was listening to.”
Greg McLean on the set of Jungle.
As Jungle so forcefully documents, Yossi Ghinsberg’s experiences while lost and alone in the Bolivian Amazon were harrowing, applying easily reopened scars of both the physical and emotional variety. “It was a big thing for him,” McLean says of Ghinsberg watching from the sidelines as his life was recreated for the big screen. “It was very emotional for him when the film had its premiere at The Melbourne International Film Festival, and it was so warmly received. He’d written the book many years ago, and he’d been trying for such a long time to turn it into a film. He’d been through hell in Hollywood, where they wanted to turn it into an action film and cast Jean-Claude Van Damme,” McLean laughs, “so he’d almost given up hope. It’s been a really, really long personal journey for him.”
The film was also a big journey for Daniel Radcliffe, who has been carving out an increasingly eccentric post-Harry Potter career, be it by playing an FBI agent going undercover as a skinhead in Imperium; a gross-out Igor in Victor Frankenstein; or a farting corpse in Swiss Army Man. In Jungle, the young actor shed kilos to hit Ghinsberg’s emaciated survivalist state, and hurled himself into the film’s location shoot with gusto. “He was just really moved by the story,” says McLean. “He was inspired by Yossi’s courage, strength and determination. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role though. He’s an amazing guy. He’s fun to work with, and he’s just a really cool guy.”
Greg McLean on the set of Jungle with AACTA nominated cinematographer, Stefan Duscio.
As he had with 2007’s December Boys, the film found Radcliffe once again shooting in Australia, with location filming principally taking place in Queensland’s Mount Tambourine, with additional establishing scenes lensed in Colombia. “We had to get some of the village scenes and the wider shots there,” McLean explains. “We couldn’t do that in Queensland. We shot the more close-in stuff there.” Set up as an Australian feature, Jungle melded its key local crew with a larger Colombian crew while on location, where the various techies found themselves strapped into safety harnesses to avoid tumbling into the treacherous waters of the Colombian Amazon. “We all knew that we were on an incredible adventure,” McLean says. “Standing in the middle of that jungle was breathtaking. Mount Tambourine was amazing too. It was a privilege…you don’t have those kind of experiences every day.”
Greg McLean with his The Belko Experiment collaborator James Gunn.
McLean had previously shot in Colombia on the 2016 dark horror comedy, The Belko Experiment, but that project had restricted him to urban locations and studios. And like Jungle, that film also found McLean giving up screenwriting duties (which he had undertaken on his prior films), this time to a major player in the form of writer/producer/director, James Gunn, who famously injected The Marvel Cinematic Universe with a massive dose of warped, spaced out humour courtesy of his Guardians Of The Galaxy movies. “I just saw James Gunn actually,” McLean audibly smiles. “It was at this LA Halloween party, and people went way over the top with their costumes. James was dressed as Alice Cooper. It was this wild costume and I just walked right past him because I didn’t recognise him. He’s a really cool guy, and it was a lot of fun working with him.”
Has working with James Gunn put Greg McLean in the superhero orbit? Would he like to direct a movie for Marvel Studios? “Who wouldn’t want to do a $200 million superhero action movie?” McLean laughs. “You’d be mad not to, wouldn’t you? That would be a dream! It’s such a big canvas, but it’s all just storytelling, isn’t it? I grew up loving Superman and Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark, so absolutely, I’d love to do something like that.”
Watch this space…
Jungle is released in cinemas on November 9. Click here for the review.
