It is no spoiler to reveal that, by the end of Jungle, Daniel Radcliffe is lost in the wild; crazed and screaming at the sky. He doesn’t know where he is or even who he is. They should’ve called it Harry Potter and the Crashingly Obvious Metaphor: Radcliffe has been roaming the wilderness seeking life beyond Potter for years.
A familiar route for actors post-big-budget franchise is to throw themselves into the edgiest, least typecast roles. Last year brought the strenuously bizarre Swiss Army Man, in which he played a corpse whose miraculous flatulence and magnetic erection helped Paul Dano out of the wilderness. Radcliffe insisted on appearing in every scene, subjecting himself to myriad indignities in what felt more like a masochistic penance than a career reinvention. Elsewhere, he’s tried straight horror (Victor Frankenstein, Horns), indie romcom (What If) and beatnik drama (as Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings).
While his roles are varied, the process remains similar. Radcliffe busts a gut trying to be un-Potter-like. The celebrity press cries “You won’t BELIEVE what Harry Potter’s done now!” And the public sighs “Meh” at the average end product. His only post-Potter hit has been The Woman in Black. None of this is to say he’s a bad actor – he’s had good reviews for stage work such as 2007’s Equus – but is clearly getting bad advice. You feel sympathy for him, as he was thrust into stardom at a young age, but he’s starting to look like the Potter movies’ Mark Hamill.
Rubbing salt into the wound is Emma Watson, who graduated from Hogwarts with all the requisite qualifications – chiefly Defence Against the Dark Arts. Jungle will play on a few dozen UK screens; Watson’s Beauty and the Beast for Disney is the highest-grossing of 2017. She has also done her indie gap year, with several flops (The Circle, Regression, The Colony). Plus a modelling career, a degree from Brown University and an UN goodwill ambassador role.
So, who’s the exception, Radcliffe or Watson? Looking at the rest of the “big seven”, as JK Rowling dubbed them, there hasn’t been a lot to send an owl home about. Rupert “Ron Weasley” Grint’s most prominent role so far has been in an Ed Sheeran music video. Tom “Draco” Felton, Matthew “Neville” Lewis and Evanna “Luna” Lynch all get by as actors. Bonnie “Ginny” Wright is directing. Those with minimal exposure, such as Domhnall Gleeson, Robert Pattinson and Clémence Poésy, are the real breakouts. Is it safe to speak of the curse of Potter? JK had better sharpen her quill because it’s all pointing to one thing: sequels.
Jungle is in Cinemas from Friday 20 October
