Previously on Nightmares of Nature, a frog and two other animal heroes try to survive a swamp, and this season, similar to the last, has three heroes – an iguana, an opossum, and a spider. The three live in an area in Central or South America this season with the title Lost in the Jungle. Within the titular jungle is a laboratory that humans abandoned, hosting dangerous predators and electric infrastructure.

Nightmares of Nature seems like the first nature documentary series that’s shot within a horror atmosphere. Of course, the aesthetics aren’t strictly horror here, since Cabin in the Woods happens during daylight. And this time around, there are some cool shots like the kind of fungi that seems non-threatening. But then it shows viewers blood in the water, literally, to show river’s dangers to a group of iguanas.

The jungle, as the show captures, is a place where animals can eat or be someone else’s food. This season, more than the last, makes the viewers understand the concept of what’s big and small. It has drone shots of the jungle and all we see are leaves and trees on some occasion. These shots in Lost in the Jungle reinforce just how these creatures’ journeys as lengthy for them as they are treacherous.

A critic compared Nightmares of Nature to Tiny Creatures, despite how bad the latter is. Going by some reviews, both shows incorporate human infrastructure, upending the ‘purity’ of the genre. From what it seems, though, the execution here is much better, like with shots of electric insect traps. These objects are equally menacing as natural predators in a show that attracts the ‘nature is metal’ crowd.

There’s another element that Lost in the Jungle innovates on – how it shows its heroes and predators. Sure, it borrows a lot from nature programming’s tropes of the predators being bigger than their prey. But sometimes, in the case of both the ants and the spider, the predators are much smaller. The little spider can equally be afraid of smaller ants and the ants, well, I won’t spoil it, but it’s capable nightmare fuel.

Lost in the Jungle captures animal behaviour, some of these heroes ‘better’ than others ax expressing said behaviours. An opossum gathers its strength after a snake bites it, the spider’s eyes innately expressive. The baby iguana, though, is a bit of an enigma and narration contextualizes their struggles. Someone described Maya Hawke’s narration as sexy, which, where, but she does capable, spunky work here.

Lost in the Jungle, the second season of Nightmares of Nature, is available to stream on Netflix.