Jumanji - Plot

Plot

In 1869, two boys bury a chest in a forest near Keene, New Hampshire. A century later, 12-year-old Alan Parrish flees from a gang of bullies to a shoe factory owned by his father, Sam, where he meets his friend Carl Bentley, one of Sam's employees. When Alan accidentally damages a machine with a prototype sneaker Carl hopes to present, Carl takes the blame and loses his job. Outside the factory, after the bullies beat Alan up and steal his bicycle, Alan follows the sound of tribal drumbeats to a construction site and finds the chest, containing a board game called Jumanji.

Alan takes the game home and attempts to run away after having an argument with his father about attending a boarding school. However, his friend Sarah Whittle gives his bike back. The two begin playing Jumanji, which acts strangely: When a player rolls the dice, the player's piece moves itself and a message appears on the board. When Alan makes his first move, he is sucked into the game. Although the message states that he will be freed when a five or an eight is rolled, Sarah quits the game after being attacked by bats.

Twenty-six years later, Judy and Peter Shepherd move into the Parrish house with their aunt Nora after losing their parents in a skiing accident. Judy and Peter hear Jumanji's drumbeats and play the game in the attic, and as a result, giant mosquitoes attack them, and reddish-orange monkeys destroy their kitchen. Realizing that everything will be restored when the game ends, they continue the game despite the danger. Peter rolls a five, releasing both a lion and Alan, who is now an adult. Alan locks the lion in a bedroom, then goes to the now closed shoe factory. On the way, he meets Carl, working as a police officer, and discovers that the town's economy was devastated by the factory's closure. In the factory, a homeless man reveals that Sam abandoned the business to search for his son until his death in 1991.

Alan joins the game with Judy and Peter, but when rolling the dice has no effect on the board, Alan realizes they are continuing the game he and Sarah started years ago. Finding Sarah, now a psychic who had gone insane after Alan's disappearance, Alan tricks her into rejoining the game and the following moves release man-eating vines from a giant flower, a big-game hunter named Van Pelt who is intent on killing Alan as he is a product of the game itself and largely inspired by Mr. Parrish, and an animal stampede (rhinoceros, African elephants and zebras). Among other things, Peter transforms into a monkey after trying to cheat; Peter, Sarah and Judy battle Van Pelt in a local department store; a monsoon floods the house; a crocodile attacks the group; Alan is sucked into the floor by quicksand; an earthquake breaks the house in two; large poisonous spiders come out and Judy is shot by a poisonous barb from a flower. Finally, Alan wins the game just in time when Van Pelt is about to shoot him, causing all jungle elements (including Van Pelt) to be sucked back into the board in a form of a whirlwind.

After that, Alan and Sarah suddenly find themselves back in 1969 again, once again children, but with full knowledge of their lives after they started playing. Alan reconciles with and admits to his father that he was the one who damaged the machine. Carl gets his job back, and Sam allows his son to attend a local school if he wishes to do so. Alan then gets terrified thinking that Judy and Peter were still in the attic where Sarah reminded him that they're back in the year 1969 and that Judy and Peter will not be in the neighborhood until the year 1995 while handing Alan their game tokens as a way of showing that they never played the game in the beginning. Alan and Sarah chain up the Jumanji board and throw it into a river, where they kiss before leaving.

In the present, Alan and Sarah are married and expecting for their first child, Alan has taken over the shoe business, Carl still works in the factory as the plant supervisor, and Sam is retired, but still alive. When Judy, Peter, and their parents meet with Alan and Sarah at a Christmas party, they offer Judy and Peter's father a job in the shoe company, also discouraging them from going on the ski trip that would've killed them.

Meanwhile, two French-speaking girls hear drumbeats as they walk along a beach, where the Jumanji board is half buried in the sand.