I have a confession to make. Besides being absolutely terrified of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, I'm also a little bit scared of the movie, Jumanji. Now, I'm not talking about Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle or its sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level. Those movies are comedies! I’m talking about the OG, Robin Williams movie from 1995. That Jumanji scares me.
But again, it's only just a little bit. I mean, for Pete’s sake, I’m a massive fan of horror movie franchises and watch them like there’s no tomorrow. I'm not a little chicken baby! That said, Jumanji still unnerves me like few other films can, and I have five reasons why.
Robin Williams Totally Sells The Fear Of Having Been Trapped Inside Jumanji's Hellscape Of A Reality
Robin Williams always had depth, which is why we all miss him so much. Not too long ago, I watched Hook for the first time and was spellbound by Williams’ performance as a grown-up Peter Pan who forgot his magic.
He also had a knack for dark comedy, even though people didn’t usually talk about those movies. All of this is to say that Robin Williams was a highly versatile actor, and whether he was in a kid’s movie or an Ra-rated thriller like Insomnia, you could always count on him to deliver a performance that had many layers to it.
The same could be said of Jumanji, as his character, Alan Parrish, has been through some stuff. When he was younger, he was sucked into the titular board game and was stuck within its hellscape of a jungle FOR YEARS until somebody else later rolled a five, which unleashed Alan, as well as a freaking lion!
The thing is, you can see Alan’s entire experience in Williams’ face once he’s released from the board game. I never even knew what PTSD was when I initially saw Jumanji as a child, but whatever it was, Alan Parrish was a victim of it.
His fear fueled my imagination to wonder what the hell it was actually like on the other side of the board game, but I didn’t want to know, because it was written all over Robin Williams’ face. Jumanji is hell, and I’ve always found the movie unsettling for that reason. It’s the stuff that we don’t see that scares me.
The Build-up To Each New Challenge Is Still A Case Study In Suspense
Alfred Hitchcock, who was often referred to as “The Master of Suspense,” died in 1980, so he never got a chance to watch Jumanji. Granted, it’s not like he would have WANTED to watch Jumanji, but still, you never know. Anyway, since Jumanji is a kids’ movie, the suspense can’t take too long, but it’s definitely there. Every time the dice rolls and the pieces move across the board, there’s always a little riddle involved before the actual horror emerges.
Some of them are kind of corny (“This will not be an easy mission/Monkeys slow the expedition”--Hmm...I wonder what that will be), but others, like “Need a hand? Why, you just wait/We’ll help you out…we have eight,” gave me the creeps!
The build-up to each of the challenges actually emerging was usually scary, like the floor starting to give away and turn into quicksand, or the rumbling in the distance of a stampede. Yes, the reveal itself was usually not very good (especially with 1990s special effects), but the lead-up to the reveal was always something and still somewhat bothers me. Imagine your house quickly filling up with vines. Speaking of which...
The Yellow Plant Scene Is Still Unsettling To Me
You know what movie always scared the hell out of me as a child besides Moonwalker, Beetlejuice and Jumanji? Little Shop of Horrors (is that remake still happening, by the way?). Audrey II growing bigger and bigger and singing, “Feed me, Seymour!” is funny to me now, sure, but the musical, which had formerly been a horror movie, was still just that to me back in the day… just with singing.
My sister, who warned me not to watch several movies when I was younger, was actually in a local production of Little Shop of Horrors, and I vividly remember how eerie the giant puppet was for the Audrey II.
Anyway, the fact of the matter is, giant, human-eating plants terrify me, so of course we had to get one in Jumanji. The thing that really bothered me, though, was that unlike Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors, which was an alien (“A mean green mother from outer space,” to be more precise), Jumanji had REAL animals in it. Like mosquitoes, monkeys and a lion! Yeah!
I always knew that the movie was meant to be a fantasy (the board game that kidnaps people was kind of a dead giveaway), but the fact that it had all of those animals and natural occurrences, but also a human-eating plant always made me think that maybe something like that actually existed out there in nature. This gave me the heebie-jeebies then, and still gives me a bit of the heebie-jeebies now.
The Spiders Are Also Unsettling, Even Though They Look Ridiculous
You know what I’m genuinely scared of? Centipedes. All of those legs, and the quickness at which they move has always set me on edge. It’s the reason why no matter what room I go into, my eyes always dart toward the corners and ceilings, because that’s where centipedes usually like to chill out. Then they spread out, flushing out all those legs. Ugh!
But do you know what I don’t mind? Spiders. In fact, I actually like spiders. I have one in my basement that I call the enforcer because all manner of bugs get caught up in its web. The spider even caught a centipede one time, which I called my then five-year-old son downstairs to kill for me. Stop laughing, they scare me!
But, like I said, spiders don’t scare me... except when they’re in Jumanji. Which is strange, since the spiders look utterly ridiculous, even back then! It might be because the challenge before the spiders was quicksand, so Robin Williams was stuck in the floor when they came bouncing around toward him. Could you imagine being stuck like that and vulnerable when an enormous spider is coming your way? I could, which is why it still freaks me out even to this day.
The Hunter Is Super Silly, But Also Somehow Terrifying
Lastly, there’s Van Pelt, the main antagonist of Jumanji. Played by Jonathan Hyde (who also plays Alan’s father – let that sink in), Van Pelt is a big game hunter and always on the hunt. The scariest part, though, is that he will hunt anything, and has a big gun to prove it.
Van Pelt might as well be the Terminator since he’s constantly on the move. But the thing that probably startled me the most about him is that as dangerous as the Jumanji dimension is, Van Pelt is the most dangerous creature in it. Like, what the hell is Van Pelt even doing in there? That’s what I want to know. Why would the game include giant plant monsters, a stampede and a hunter? It again makes me imagine what the hell is in Jumanji that we don’t actually know about.
And no, I don’t count the comedies, even though they are in the same universe as this movie. That takes all the fear out of it, and I want Jumanji to be scary. It makes it so much better that way.
That’s why Jumanji kind of scares me. But what about you? Can you openly admit that Jumanji kind of scares you, too? For more news on all things Jumanji, be sure to swing around CinemaBlend often. You know, like a monkey!
