Plot
In 1969, Alan Parrish lives in Brantford, New Hampshire, with his parents, Sam and Carol. One day, he escapes a group of bullies and retreats to Sam's shoe factory. His friend Carl Bentley reveals a new shoe prototype he made himself. Alan inadvertently damages the shoe after misplacing it on a conveyor belt, but Carl takes responsibility and is dismissed. After the bullies accost Alan and steal his bicycle, he follows the sound of tribal drumbeats to a construction site. He finds a board game, Jumanji, which was buried 100 years earlier, and brings it home.
That night, Sam and Alan argue bitterly over whether Alan is to attend a prestigious private boarding school; Alan plans to run away, just as his friend, Sarah Whittle, returns his bicycle. Alan shows her Jumanji and invites her to play. With each dice roll, the game pieces move by themselves and a cryptic message describing the roll's outcome appears in the crystal ball at the center of the board. After Alan inadvertently rolls, a message tells him to wait in a jungle until someone rolls a five or eight and he is sucked into the game. Shortly after, a colony of bats pursues Sarah out of the mansion.
Twenty-six years later, Judy and Peter Shepherd move into the now-vacant Parrish mansion with their aunt Nora after their parents died in an accident the previous winter on a ski trip in Canada. Judy and Peter begin playing Jumanji after discovering it in the attic. Their rolls summon giant mosquitoes and a troop of monkeys. The game rules state that everything will be restored when the game ends, so they continue playing. Peter rolls a five, releasing a lion and an adult Alan. While making his way out, Alan encounters Carl, now working as a police officer. At the abandoned shoe factory, Alan, Judy and Peter discover that after Alan disappeared, Sam abandoned the shoe-making business to look for him until Sam died in 1991. The neglected shoe factory eventually closed, sending Brantford into economic decline.
Realizing that they need Sarah to finish the game, the three locate her and persuade her to join them, although she has been haunted by both Jumanji and Alan's disappearance. Sarah and Alan soon take their next turns, with the latter's releasing a big-game hunter named Van Pelt, whom he first met in the game's inner world. Judy's roll summons a stampeding herd of various animals, including several pelicans, one of which steals the game. Peter retrieves it, but Carl arrests Alan. Peter inadvertently cheats by dropping the dice instead of rolling them on his turn, causing the game to move his token back to the start and gradually transform him into the shape of his token, a baboon. As the stampede wreaks havoc in town, Van Pelt steals the game.
Peter, Sarah and Judy follow Van Pelt to a nearby discount store and battle him to reclaim the game, while Alan is released after revealing his identity to Carl. Returning to the mansion, the quartet release one calamity after another until Alan wins the game, which nullifies everything that happened as a result of the game.
Alan and Sarah return to 1969 in time for Alan to reconcile with Sam, who assures him that he does not have to attend boarding school. Alan also admits his responsibility for damaging the shoe, and Carl is rehired. Remembering the game's events, Alan and Sarah throw Jumanji into a river and share a kiss.
Later, Alan and Sarah, now married, are expecting their first child. Alan's parents are still alive, Alan is successfully running the family business, and Carl is a trusted employee and family confidante. Alan and Sarah meet Judy, Peter, and their parents Jim and Martha for the first time during a Christmas party. Alan offers a job to Jim and convinces him and Martha to cancel their ski trip, averting their deaths in the previous timeline.
Meanwhile, on a beach, Jumanji is seen lying partially buried in the sand. Two French-speaking girls hear the drumbeats from the game as they walk towards it.
