Anacondas 4: Trail of Blood

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

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

Shot back-to-back with Anaconda 3, this carries on the riveting saga of snakes, flowers and secret formulas. It's come a long, ridiculous way since it's humble origins. This continues the cheap, made for television feel. The CGI is just an effortless mess which just can't interact with it's surroundings. This snake must be as light as a feather to not disturb the dirt as it slithers. The original had the charm of campy "throat-o-vision" which was actually practical effects. The fourth installment doesn't even have David Hasselhoff. There were a few genuine laughs, which suggest this should have been a comedy. The grenade scene was just unexpectedly goofy, but pleasant.

Let's start it of with the acting. When I watch a movie, I expect it to feel real. I expect it to feel natural. When I was watching this movie I felt horrified by how the directors can actually think that people start dialogs like they do in this movie.

The effects does not feel real and the plot has definitely been used before. And the way the movie flow and the way things happen, feel so fake. And not like some kind of Quentin Tarantino movie either.

To top it all of I feel like they made the wrong actors play the wrong characters. None of the voices feel like a fit.

Still, if you are really bored, You could watch it. But you should not watch this film to be amused.

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.