Anaconda – 2 out of 5
I saw Anaconda in the theaters in 1997 and thought it was just so laughably bad. The only time I re-watched it was when RiffTrax decided to riff on it. If you follow my blog, you know that in October I only review horror films but I also like to pick a horror franchise and work my way through it. I’m not sure why I chose the Anaconda franchise but considering it has sequels I have never seen (and even a crossover with Lake Placid) I decided I would check this one out and revisit the awful (but hilarious) first film.
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| Just because you caught a giant snake, it doesn't mean you can't look fierce in the photo with it. |
Director Terri Flores (Jennifer Lopez) and her crew; cameraman Danny Rich (Ice Cube), production manager Denise Kalberg (Kari Wuhrer), sound engineer Gary Dixon (Owen Wilson) and host Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde), are working with Dr. Steven Cale (Eric Stolz) to locate a secluded tribe on the Amazon when they come across a stranded Paraguayan man named Paul Serone (Jon Voight). At first, everything seems okay but Serone is very mysterious and slightly threatening and, after tragedy strikes Dr. Cale, he convinces the crew to take a new route down the Amazon River. It turns out that Serone is a snake hunter and is out to get an extremely large anaconda and doesn’t care who he hurts if they get in his way. However, getting the anaconda will prove more deadly than Serone anticipated and the documentary crew is now in great danger.
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| They're looking at Jon Voight's terrible accent. It manifested itself in a physical form and is now a bigger threat than the snake. |
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| Sure, the panther is surprised by the anaconda attack but it also stepped on a lego brick at the same time. |
It’s super difficult to make a thriller about an animal and have it not look incredibly silly. Jawsis the industry standard of a successful feature. Just recently I watched Crawl (and you can read my review here) and found that one to be another successful feature to make a thriller about a killer animal work. Anaconda does not work. The snake is just too ridiculous to take seriously. Often when the atmosphere and cinematic world is crafted correctly, you can suspense disbelief and accept what you are seeing as authentic feeling. When done right, the over-the-top stuff can happen and you don’t question it. Like the alligators being overly aggressive in Crawl or Jaws literally jumping the front half of his body on the back of the Orca. The world of Anaconda doesn’t reach these levels and when you add in so many other weak factors, it results in a film that is more laughable than thrilling.
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| I can't tell if this moment was supposed to be a legit horrific scene or a a comedic punchline. |
It would be easy to shit on the effects of the film but, in reality, the practical and computer effects aren’t too bad. The film was produced during the infancy of computer generated effects and they are okay for the time period. Granted, they don’t marry well with the practical animatronic snake but, overall, still not bad. I will say that the design of the snake is a touch goofy as they basically tried to make its face evil by giving it sinister eyes. This didn’t work and made the snake look silly. Thankfully, they stopped short of giving it a mustache to twirl and a bowler hat. Of course, all of this pales in comparison to the decision to let the snake scream and shriek (done by famed voice actor Frank Welker). First off, this screaming is annoying as hell but it only makes the snake more of a comedic villain than something sinister. A giant snake is scary but giving it the ability to scream just takes away any amount of threat it had.
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| On second thought, I wish they did put a mustache on the snake. |
The special effects are okay and the story isn’t the best but it works for a serviceable thriller about a giant killer snake; ultimately, the biggest killer for this film is the cast. While it is genuinely admirable that this late 90s film has two leads that aren’t generic white dudes the whole roster is either being too extra or too underwhelming. Lopez, Stoltz, Wilson, and Wuhrer are all so low energy for so much of the movie that they almost grow into the background while Ice Cube is trying too hard to look like a badass. Ice Cube is already intimidating but in this one it felt like he was trying too hard. Matters aren’t helped by the fact props gave him a very tiny knife that he constantly wields like it is an impressive weapon.
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| Seriously, they couldn't give him a better knife? |
The worst element of the cast, however, was Jon Voight. No one is out over-acting him in this film. Whether it is his painful accent he is attempting to do or the fact he is chewing the scenery as the bad guy who is trying to keep it secret he is a bad guy, Voight’s awful performance is magical to watch and one of the biggest reasons why this film stops short at just being terrible and is able to be fun terrible.
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| I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is the first film to ever have a POV shot of a snake's digestive system. |
Anaconda doesn’t offer up any scares, there isn’t a great performance in sight and the kills are incredibly uninspired, sterile and very boring (but what can you really do when your monster is a snake? They don’t do much beyond bite, constrict, and eat). Nothing about this production equals a great movie that is entertaining and compelling—however; all the bad elements have that special bit of magic to make it fun to watch. It’s a terrible movie in every single sense of the word but it is in this said terribleness that makes it an absolute blast to watch. Now, let’s see how the rest of the franchise goes…
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