Director: Luis Llosa
Writer: Hans Bauer, Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr (Screenplay)
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, Owen Wilson, Kari Wuhrer
Plot: A “National Geographic” film crew is taken hostage by an insane hunter, who takes them along on his quest to capture the world’s largest – and deadliest – snake.
There may be spoilers the rest of the review
Verdict: Fun Creature Feature
Story: Anaconda starts as the National Geography team set off down the Amazon River deeper than anyone has filmed before, we have director Terri (Lopez), cameraman Danny (Cube), Host Warren (Hyde), production manager Denise (Wuhrer), Dr Cale (Stoltz) and Gary (Wilson). Travelling down the river the crew find a standard hunter Paul Serone (Voight) offering him a ride to the next village.
This is where they first clash, Dr Cale believes he knows how to find what they are looking for while Paul believes he knows best when searching for the tribe they are looking to film. when Serone’s motives become clear, he is hunting down the world’s largest Anaconda he makes the team help him which leaves them in a battle to survive against the deadly predator.
Thoughts on Anaconda
Characters/Performance – Terri is the ambitious director about to get her big break, she is loyal to her cameraman and crew, she will never give up on her team even against Serone. Serone is a hunter who has spent his life hunting this anaconda, he doesn’t care how many people for him to get his prize. The rest of the characters a generic 101, the street smart black guy in Danny, the stuck up English presenter in Warren and the American know it all in Dr Cale.
Performance wise, Lopez is good enough in the leading role as we know most horror need a good strong leading lady. Jon Voight isn’t the best as we know this is an Oscar winning actor who is filled with funny looks throughout the film. The rest of the cast all do a solid job without being the scene stealers they could be.
Story – Stories in this genre are always easy to put together, put a group of people in an unusual location and find an oversized creature to kill them one by one. This is easy to follow and never leaves much to the imagination and can be enjoyed by all the creature feature fans out there.
Action/Adventure/Horror – The action is mostly down to them trying to escape or kill the anaconda nothing too fancy, the adventure does come going into the unknown down the Amazon river with the horror in the creature feature side of the film watching how the giant snake is trying to kill them.
Settings – I like the setting because it shows how dangerous the Amazon river and rain forest can be for anyone who dares goes deep enough into it.
Special Effects – Sadly here is another one of the weak points, the CGI looks bad, I do know this film is 20 years old now but it just doesn’t ever look like it could be that good even back then.
Final Thoughts – If you want a fun barmy creature feature, then look no further you have something big, bad and fun here.
Overall: Enjoyable but bad creature feature fun.
Rating
