Anacondas: Trail of Blood

Seriously, They must have known that this would suck. Yet they still go ahead and produce it. Why?

The first Anaconda I was not blown away by, the second had me entertained and the third was horrendous. The fourth was better than the previous instalment but in almost every way it is still poppycock. Crystal Allen returns and she is decent and John Rhys-Davies tries hard with his weak material and underwritten character, but that is pretty much the only praise I can give. The scenery/sets I suppose were sort of nice, but they were not given any justice by the dull photography and hackneyed editing. The music is generic and forgettable again, the effects are not that great and don't do anything to enhance any suspense in the atmosphere. The direction is also sloppy, the dialogue is awful with none of it ringing true and the story is an incoherent mess. The acting apart from Allen and Rhys-Davies is very poor and not helped by the fact that there are too many characters so any empathy we try to feel doesn't come out. Overall, a mess but better than the third. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Anaconda went from Hollywood blockbuster to Hollywood B-movie to Scyfy channel garbage and this 4th outing is most definetly the latter.

To its credit it follows on from part 3 pretty well, though considering the two movies were filmed back to back this isn't all too shocking a fact.

Once again our Dr.Amanda Hayes is involved the anaconda/blood orchid lacklustre adventure though now we've lost the "Hoff" and gained the underrated though a tad hammy Linden Ashby.

The sfx are even worse than the previous movie but thankfully everything else is better, marginally better anyway.

The excellent John Rhys Davies also returns but yet again has a tiny role. Why have the best actor in the smallest role? Heartbreaking, truly.

Though the Anaconda franchise seems to have merged with Lake Placid I'm hoping this is the end of the solo movies, they're simply not entertaining at this stage and the franchise has been milked far enough.

One for big fans of the franchise who don't care about just how far the quality has dipped.

The Good:

Carries on from the previous movie well

The Bad:

Really poor cgi

Plot is really generic

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Someone really needs to have a word with the creators about the anacondas teeth

An oddly large number of people seem to want to be eaten by giant snakes, who knew?

This movie was not as bad as expected. The acting wasn't Oscar worthy but for a Sci-Fi produced film, most of the cast gave it all they had. Speaking of the cast, there were plenty of characters in this film, that's for sure. Maybe a bit too many. So much so that the two other people I saw this with kept asking, "Well, who are these people?" or "Where was this guy in the movie before now? I never seen him before now!" And it's true. There were so many characters and competing story lines that it was hard to keep track of exactly what the heck was going on sometimes.

Another problem with cheesy horror films like this is that the writers have characters do the dumbest things just for the sake of moving the plot along or for an individual character to serve as an easy kill for the monster. There are a lot of instances in the movie where this plot device is used. It shows a serious lack of creativity on the writers' part. It makes the characters seem so cliché. And when they continue to do stupid stuff in situations where they should be more cautious or just use plain ol' commonsense, it's hard for the viewer to care when they end up in the mouth of an 100-foot anaconda.

Other things to note: Gore is not too bad although special effects overall are the worse. The film moves along at a consistent pace from start to finish and the ending hints at a sequel, but I'm not so sure that's a good idea. From the first Anaconda on up to this latest effort, there hasn't been anything new added to the franchise. And unless writers start actually being creative, there probably won't be anything added to the franchise that justifies another movie, which might explain why the major film production companies stopped after the second Anaconda film.

After the baby snake from the killer Anaconda was salvaged from the fiery explosion in Anaconda 3, it grows at a rapid pace due to the blood orchid serum and is ready to attack.

We first see that the baby snake from the end of the third film is no longer a baby. The snake grew 5 times the normal size within days of the new serum being introduced into its system. The only downside is that it makes the creature far more aggressive than usual. The snake can now regenerate itself after a wound when the serum is given to it. It escapes capture and kills the Murdoch's scientist from the end of the 3rd movie. Murdoch hires a hitman to kill Amanda from the previous film because she knows too much. We also learn he has a week to live without the new serum so he wants results ASAP. Can Amanda survive Murdoch and the killer snake?

Anaconda 4 is another failure in the series, like the 3rd one. Both of which are made for television entires put out by SciFi TV. This one feels just as rushed and cheap as the third movie. We get very little character development which made me not feel for any of them when the snake attacks. Crystal Allen does a good job again, and Linden Ashby is a welcomed addition to the cast as well. Everyone else is in this movie just to be snake food.

I liked it slightly more than Anaconda 3, but that's not saying much.

3/10