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“Island Escape” Available Here at Amazon.com

Chase, a washed up mercenary with touch of amnesia regarding his past, is hired to round out a six-person team for a rescue mission on the Isle of Grand Manan where a top secret TSL research facility has gone dark and a high-level CEO’s daughter has gone missing. Ordered to retrieve the daughter inside a 48-hour window, the team arrives on the seemingly deserted island to find multiple dead scientists having been torn to shreds. The team soon learns they’re not alone when attacked by bigger, aggressive, monstrous versions of themselves. Unable to believe their eyes, the one scientist left on the island has determined they’ve been trapped inside an encircling wormhole that resets the island and it’s inhabitants every 3 days, turning those left alive after the third day into these humongous, blood-hungry creatures. With the mission quickly dissolution, it’s quickly being pieced together that the rescuing mercenaries are the ones who actually need rescuing and their only way to escape would nearly destroy them all.

I’ve said this once before and I’ll say it again. Weaving wormholes, time loops, time travel, and the like into a narrative is a tricky, tricky business. Bending time and space can calamitously collapse a story so bad that every internet warrior and science fiction nerd, including myself, will pick apart and ridicule the film until the end of time, but if the portent collapse can be averted and little-to-no complaints with the time travel aspect of the story can go unscathed for a better part of the runtime, then the power of the multi-dimensional space time continuum can be magical and enthralling. Writer-director Bruce Wemple (“Altered Hours,” “My Best Friend’s Dead”) wraps his hand around a wormhole-driven action-horror “Island Escape” to grasp ahold of the unruly concept of time. The Traverse Terror production, a division of producers Cole Payne and Mason Dwinell’s Traverse Media in association with Wemple’s 377 Films, and presented and produced by Patrick Ewald’s Dread Central, “Island Escape” rounds out the producer set with Vincent Conroy.

Bruce Wemple carries with him a cast entourage, a staple of actors who have worked years with the filmmaker through a number of project. “Island Escape” is no different as Wemple signs aboard his trusted troupe to tackle the terror on TLS island with a rescue gone wormhole wrong. The story has a trifold focus Chase (James Liddell, “Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor”) as the washed up gun for hire with memory loss, Addison (Ariella Mastroianni, “My Best Friend’s Dead”) as team lead and recruit of the Isle of Gran Manan mission, and Russ (Grant Schumacher, “My Best Friend’s Dead”) as the dithery team member not in Chase’s good graces based of fragmented memories of a failed mission. Between the three characters there lies a fleeting tautness that’s not tremendous carried out as expected from initial introductions. Instances such as Chase expressing his distrust for Russ never has the tension reach open air in any time they’re together or in the case of Addison as a melancholic memory for Chase that eventually evolves into mid-misison romance that’s more spontaneous than building momentum to in the first and second act. The undercooked characters fail to establish boundaries, positions, and progressing or regressing dynamics and arcs. There’s more headway with supporting staff in Tag, a self-penancing father doing dirty, dangerous work to support his young daughter and this consistently shows throughout his screen span, hitting upon the nerve of a father trying his best for the sake of his child. The cast rounds out with a handful more of mercenaries and scientists to become minced meat by their devilish doppelgangers with Chris Cimperman (“First Contact”), Michael L. Parker (“First Contact”), Andrew Gombas (“The Tomorrow Job”), William Champion (“The Tomorrow Job”), and the feature length debut of Renee Gagner filling those roles.

Wormholes. The suspended openings in space let the Dominion race invade Star Fleet in the Alpha Quadrant of “Deep Space Nine,” dropped a fiery plane engine on top of the titular character “Donnie Darko,” and brought back something alien and terribly evil in the titular ship “Event Horizon.” For Bruce Wemple and his “Island Escape,” wormholes have become more earthbound thanks to a shady research corporation delving into dangerous methods and unscrupulous science practices for the go-to cover up slogan of a better world tomorrow. While Wemple spins an intriguing yarn needled quick to be full of cankerous clones coming from all corners of the island to attack their uncorrupted selves while trying to survive and flee, the filmmaker skip stitches during his knitting of a tight narrative, fashioning an uneven story that can’t quite get the pattern right for in some of the more restlessly difficult areas of trouble island. Fleshing out Chase’s blank slate produces no reason to light, Russ’s lack of motivation in divulging life-and-death information, the deep dive into Island experiments fall to the wayside, the CEO’s daughter seemingly dead to all of a sudden be alive, and I could go on with all the loose ends that kneecap the better parts of story, such as the creature action and the wormhole aspect, but the fact won’t escape that there’s a mishandling of the island’s treacherous overgrowth that’s severely underplayed and the epic scale Wemple tries to impress is torpedoed by omitted small cogs that turn the bigger, weight-bearing gears.

Dread presents Island Escape onto a high-definition Blu-ray distributed by Epic Pictures. The AVC encoded, 1080pm, BD25, presenting the film in an anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect ratio, is a slurry of personal style and cinematography issues. Capacity-wise, not a ton of wall-bearing issues that would make the visuals crumble; a few fleeting areas of dark side banding and quick movement aliasing pop up occasionally. Where most of the issues stem are stylistically with poor VFX compositions that stymie any high-action utile climaxes. The light pink/fuchsia grading replaces much of the island’s, or island-like setting’s, innate green foliage for a broad one-tone that has an adverse effect of unnaturally darkening the characters. Two English audio options are available to select: a Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Dolby Stereo 2.0. Both lossy formats offer what this particular films needs, a fast and loose sufficient mix that gets the job done without causing too many waves. Most of the dialogue has a ADR pretense that I would take a wild guess and say is more a sound design issue of not creating space in the depth field. Each character sound to be on the same audio plane that forces a full-on push of dialogue right to the front of the audio layering that makes ever channel in the 5.1 the same. Ambience Foley is harshly isolated from other tracks so if a character is walking through the forest, you hear nothing else but the lonely crunching the tree litter that doesn’t mesh with onscreen movements. With most digital recording, no interference and damage flaws are present. Optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available. Special features include a roundtable commentary with writer-director Bruce Wemple at the helm with most of the cast speaking through Zoom or some kind of video chat program. In addition, the commentary is greatly colorful with more jokes and jabs at one another and at themselves that reflect how much of a good time they have working with each other on this film and previous Wemple credits. Also included in the special features are a few deleted scenes, the making of “Island Escape,” feature trailer, and other Dread presented film trailers. Like most Epic Releasing products, a standard Blu-ray Amaray case displays an intriguing cover art for Dread’s 47^th at-home title with a wormhole opening to an skull-faced Island and a helicopter and four soldiers walking toward it. Disc art renders the same image and there’s no insert included opposite side of the case. With a region free playback, “Island Escape” has a runtime of 86-minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: The haphazardly executed science-fictional survival film “Island Escape” has good plot bones underneath the shambled edifice of an ambitious façade with only decent monster mayhem and creature effects dwelling inside.

“Island Escape” Available Here at Amazon.com

Yossi Ghinsberg yearned for more than the comfy, cushy life he was born into and being young and adventurous, Yossi travels abroad to backpack in Bolivia to pursue self-discovery and beauty in places far less travelled despite his father’s wishes. He quickly befriends fellow backpackers Marcus and Kevin and together, they lay tracks through the eclectic terrain of the breathtaking Bolivian landscape, but wasn’t until an Austrian geologist named Karl approached Yossi about a promise of unearthing gold and experiencing hidden tribes deep inside the lush jungle. After some convincing, the three friends venture into the jungle with only Karl to guide them and, at first glance, the wilderness is an escape from the noise and pollution of human corrupted inhabitations, but a drastic realization quickly washes over them when they’re force to separate and that the jungle is a cauldron of constant survival. Along with captivating beauty, fire ants, poisonous snakes, symbiotic organisms, jaguars, and torrential rains tip the iceberg of everything that embodies the sequestered jungle and Yossi must endure the trials and tribulations alone in order to make it out alive.

Based off the book of true events from Yossi Ghinsberg comes the motion picture retelling of Ghinsberg harrowing tale of survival in “Jungle.” The 2017 biographical adventure-thriller is penned by Justin Monjo (teleplay writer for TV hits like the sci-fi odyssey “Farscape”) and directed by “Rogue” and “Wolf Creek” director Greg McLean. “Jungle” showcases the night and day environment of one of the world’s most beautiful, yet deadliest locations, cascaded with awesome uncharted landscapes with an augmentation of great mortality once man is introduced. However, the thing with the jungle is that no matter what man’s objectives may be with the rainforest, whether it’s to destroy it or to embrace it as were Yossi’s intentions, nature treats all with the same merciless brutal as it’s kill or be killed. Yossi is in the midst of a man versus nature thematic element where Darwin’s survival of the fittest lays all well true and from his book, Yossi Ghinsberg went through a nearly three weeks of severe isolation, stomach-devouring starvation, and vigilant hyperawareness against the local wildlife. Yet, somehow, he survived.

To play such as downtrodden character needed an actor committed wholeheartedly to the story and, luckily for McLean and the rest of the crew, Daniel Radcliffe encompassed Yossi Ghinsberg and his plight with passion and dedication. So much dedication that the Harry Potter famed actor lost about 14 to 15 pounds in order to mimic starvation and really put his body close to the hazards Yossi had faced. “Jungle” has certainly solidified his range as an actor inside the genre of not only fantasy films, but also thrillers as well. From “Horns” to “Imperium,” the English-born, 5’5”, 28-year-old actor has placed a major footprint in the industry that stretched from low-budget to Hollywood stardom and doesn’t seek to stop in the near future. Radcliffe is joined by a pair of Australian actors in Alex Russell (“Chronicle” and “Bait”) as American photographer Kevin Gale and Joel Jackson as Swiss teacher Marcus Stamm on sabbatical. A standout performance, one that really rivals Radcliffe in cliffhanging suspense with cryptic intentions, is that of Thomas Kretschmann (“Blade II”) playing the Austrian geologist Karl Ruprecther. Fantastic chemistry between all four men with spot-on performances, especially not portraying their native heritage.

While Greg McLeans has no fear in getting gritty where gritty needs to be get, “Jungle” has a tame nature about it for a director well-known for Outback cruelty. McLean doesn’t exact the right amount of perilous attitude that was unfortunately bestow upon Yossi. Much of Yossi Ghinsberg’s book was not translated to screen such as his rectum being impaled by a large stick when he falls down a slope. The hard stop editing and pivot bounces the viewer around being out of control on a trampoline. When we meet Yossi for the first time and he encounters Marcus Stamm, a cascading event of one jointly pursuit with another that string along and attach Kevin Gale to a web of awkwardly editing scenes of traveling through Bolivia in what felt like a slapdash montage with the sole purpose of setting up the trio’s friendship in an unsympathetic way. Another issue with the editing was that the film had to keep reminding the viewers about previous events, such as when Yossi was bitten by a fire ant, and those scenes ended up being a redundant time filler that points audiences to being naive and inattentive to cherry pick previous actions.

Umbrella Entertainment releases “Jungle” on a rated mature, region B Blu-ray with crystal clear full high definition, 1080p presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Image quality bares no marks of compression issues nor any flagrant fouls in the coloring, whether natural or generated. Aliasing is also a non-issue. The 5.1 DTS-HD English soundtrack has moments of low fidelity at the beginning of the film where making out the dialogue can be challenge, but the jungle ambiance and the Johnny Klimek (“Land of the Dead”) score bring alive the eclectic atmospherics of the wild, wildlife. Bonus features include a featurette that extends up Danial Radcliffe becoming Yossi Ghinsberg, the making of the Yossi Ghinsberg story, cast and crew interviews, and the theatrical trailer. “Jungle’s” adventurous first half sets up the catalytic downfall into desperation and despair of a man versus nature thriller in the latter half, splitting Daniel Radcliffe into two auspicious roles of enchanting self-discovery and a fight for survival. The movie most certainly encourages one to read the book of Yossi Ghisbergs edge of death misadventure.