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Anaconda

A National Geographic film crew, headed by Jennifer Lopez and Eric Stoltz, expeditions the tropical jungle, searching for an ancient tribe of natives - the People of the Mist.

During a terrible storm they find a hunter, Jon Voight, who tries to capture one of the deadliest creatures on earth (according to him), an anaconda. A snake that can grow to 40 feet and engorge a whole prey after crushing its bones.

This movie’s tagline goes: “You can't scream if you can't breathe.” You’ll definitely lose your breath sometimes, but not for the reasons you think.

Anaconda is a typical creature feature, like Jaws or even Alien, but different of its predecessors, Anaconda doesn’t follow one of the greatest conventions of creature features - to hide the creature as long as possible.

Luis Llosa makes the masochistic choice of showing the creature without building much of a mystery or suspense. One can think that he did that because the snake is very well made - either by animatronics or computer generated images - but, unfortunately, this isn’t the case.

One scene, in which the snake is shown attacking a wild cat, is more funny than scary, especially because of a slow editing that allows us to realize the flaws in the effects.

John Voight is another problem. Undoubtedly a talented actor, Voight portraits an antagonist without shame to show how bad he is, but in a way that makes him become just a parody.

From the movie's start, we know that the crew members are there just to become snake food; there is not much of a mystery about who is going to die and who is going to survive.

The climax of this movie happens on a waterfall, a place which at least provides one good moment - in which the snake catches his prey falling through the air. But it also provides a ridiculous one. Pay attention to the moment in which the boat reverses when leaving the place. Someone thought that it would be a good idea to run the film backwards to simulate that, but forgot about the waterfall behind it. The aftermath is a waterfall falling “upward.”

At the end, Anaconda is not the best creature feature you could get. If you desperately want to watch a movie like this, and have nothing else available, then watch it. But be aware that some scenes are more ridiculous than thrilling.

Written by: Edward Olivier

Reviewers Rating: 5.5
Reader's Rating: 10.00
Reader's Votes: 1

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