No giant snake movie will ever be as good as 1997's Anaconda. Not because of the quality, but because it is a perfect storm late 90s cheese, creature effects (both practical and CGI), and misguided filmmaking, topped off with an absolutely legendary performance from Jon Voight. In a way, the 1997 Anaconda is the inverse of Jaws. No shark movie could ever live up to that 1975 classic because Spielberg made one of the most perfect films of all time that also happened to be a shark movie. Anaconda, while not even in the same neighborhood as Jaws (not even in the same city, and possibly state, depending on which you decide to use for reference), is such a pure-blooded example of everything wrong and amazing about genre films that any other giant snake movie can only hope to catch half as much as the lightning in a bottle as Anaconda caught.
Which brings us to Beware Boiúna, 2026's giant snake movie that is a more in line with that 1997 film than the 2025 one starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black. And guys, it is so close to topping it. It is a very good movie that is two poor decisions (one small, one impossibly large) from being a genuinely great one. It is a much more serious movie, though sincere in its seriousness in such a way that it works for the film. It studiously avoids cheese and every character is given substantially more depth than this genre usually calls for.
Set in Colombia in the present day, the film primarily follows a humanitarian group, - Alli, Callum, and Proctor (played by Jessica Rothe, Will Close, and Christophe de Geest) - the boat crew taking them down the Amazon river to provide said aid, - Lena and Raul (Kiana Madeira and Jamie Newball), with Lena also on this trip to try and find her brother Jorge (Sergio Herrera) - and the suspicious group sent to study the land for future road builds that becomes antagonistic towards the first group - Brennan and Shawn (Logan Marshall-Green and Jackson Bews). Now, there are a couple of extra characters associated with the last group, but let's just say they don't matter too much in the long run.
Soon, all of these characters find themselves at a destroyed camp where they encounter the legendary Boiúna - a gigantic snake of legend comparable to the Titanoboa - who proceeds to attack everyone who has wandered into their domain. It quickly becomes a battle to survive the Amazon and the snake, with high stakes as it becomes clear that no one is safe. And I do mean no one. This movie is not afraid to kill any character, something desperately missing from the majority of horror movies.
The time we spend getting to know all of these characters (rest assured, this movie does not rush to get to the titular snake) works wonders to get you invested once the death and destruction begins. You genuinely root for the characters to survive, and the majority of the deaths actually affect the viewer. Every moment feels earned. Even better, they don't try to explain the presence of Boiúna. There's legends of a giant snake, they discover the legend is true, and then they try to survive. No muss, no fuss as far as that plot point goes.
Now, I did allude to a pair of mistakes that keep the movie from being truly great. One of these is fairly minor: the set up for a payoff that never comes (an unfired Chekov's Gun, if you will). It doesn't really affect the movie, but you wonder why they spent the time on it they did if no follow up was going to happen.
The other involves a character death. I won't say who, except to say that it is the only death that doesn't feel earned. It almost feels wrong for the character to have died. Story-wise, I mean. Characters meet all sort of undeserved fates in these movies, but from a story structure view, this death didn't work. It's a really gaping flaw in an otherwise great movie.
The performances are good across the board, with Marshall-Green giving the best performance by a mile and one I did not expect from an actor who usually does solid if unspectacular work. The effects for the snake are well done, with a real sense of weight to the beast. The Amazon is scary enough on its own, and works well as the setting for a creature feature.
Would I recommend this one? In a heartbeat. While I would tweak it a little bit myself, this is a great creature feature that never stops going once it starts.
8 out of 10.
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