Letting yourself go

Jason Biggs gets over the death of his fiancée by proposing to the first woman he meets in Wedding Daze, while in Brazil, the unhappy campers of Paradise Lost just want to escape with all their organs intact. By Declan Burke

Pitched firmly at the globetrotting generation, Paradise Lost (18s) is something of a latter-day Heart of Darkness. Stranded on a remote coast in Brazil after their bus goes off the road, a group of tourists, led by Pru (Melissa George) and Alex (Josh Duhamel), are delighted to discover a secluded bay that offers cheap booze and accommodation on a palm-fringed beach. Lured in by its idyllic perfection, the group wake the next morning to find they've been drugged and robbed, and are now the prey of a ruthless local doctor who specialises in organ-smuggling.

The posters and trailers seem to be suggesting that Paradise Lost is something of a gore-fest, but there's very little by way of actual splatter on show here, and the little that is gory is no worse than you'll see in any mainstream TV hospital drama. In fact, the movie is a thriller with modest notions of itself, which means that it's a straightforward tale of chase through the jungle and – most dramatically – through a series of underwater caverns. The thrill comes as the audience identifies with the group of helpless tourists, who seem no smarter nor more stupid that the average holidaymaker, but who find themselves in an horrendous situation with only their wits to sustain them. There's no implausible Rambo-esque turning of the tables on their pursuers: this is an adrenaline-charged ride into a terrifying unknown, and the devil take the hindmost.

The script, acting and direction rarely rise above adequate, but its ramshackle feel is part of the movie's charm. In another director's hands, this could easily have become a two-hour promo for ‘torture-porn'. That it doesn't fall into this trap, and instead maintains its fidelity to the old school of chase-and-scream horror-thrillers, gives Paradise Lost a sense of innocence that's curiously at odds with the squalid circumstances in which its victims find themselves.

Anderson (Jason Biggs) also finds himself embarking on a voyage into the unknown in Wedding Daze (15A), although his journey, while still something of a throwback to a more innocent way of making movies, is far less believable. Mourning the death of his fiancée for over a year, Anderson allows himself to be persuaded to restart his life by his best friend, which he does by asking the first woman he speaks to – a waitress, Katie (Isla Fisher) – to marry him. When she says yes, and immediately proposes moving into his apartment, Anderson must face up to the reality of what commitment really means.

It's not the set-up that's particularly unbelievable in Wedding Daze; in fact, throwing an incompatible couple together to watch the sparks fly has long been a staple of the screwball comedy. What's implausible about writer / director Michael Ian Black's movie is that it begins with a slapstick, gross-out style reminiscent of American Pie, suddenly segues into an intelligent battle-of-the-sexes comedy of manners, and then explodes into an utterly ridiculous farce for the final third. It's a pity, because the middle third, which offers neatly observed characters dealing realistically with a bizarre situation, suggests that there's quite a good movie in there struggling to escape.

Paradise Lost ***
Wedding Daze **