Anaconda Kuang Mang Zhi Zai

At only 80 minutes, Anaconda (2024) is worth your time if you enjoy giant creature features. However, there's not enough material here to warrant watching it more than once. The film gets off to a hasty start, it's not even clear how many people are on the boat until midpoint through the movie. It's safe to say character development wasn't a priority in this film, the closest we ever get to a character backstory is one of the female characters saying that chocolate reminds her of her late brother. One positive aspect of this film is that the main human villain seems more intimidating than the original's Jon Voight. In the original, I always thought it was embarrassing how the characters let the out-of-shape Voight push them around. This villain is a much more typical tough bad guy.

Ultimately, an Anaconda film will always be judged by the quality of its snake action. This Chinese adaptation does a respectable but flawed job. Midway through the film, I began to think that I had found a hidden gem. The initial snake attack on the boat is as good as the original's best scenes. But in the second half, you realize why the film is only 80 minutes. The action becomes very repetitive with both the main characters and villain somehow escaping death multiple times. The entire second half of the film is basically the characters sitting in a jungle and being used as bait.

Overall, Anaconda is worth having on as background noise for fans of creature features. 5/10.

In the First Act, this movie is an editorial mess. It wants to be a Tarantino movie with the Villain as the Protagonist. But shot like a Spielberg movie. The cinematography and shot selection is beautiful but the editing choices are terrible. It's a bad movie.

In the Second Act, the movie has time for some Asian melodrama to pull at your heart strings and some soft-core cleavage fetishization. Tonally the movie goes from a thriller to an erotic comedy and then to a sci-fi movie with an alien bug. It's a mess. You're about to bail on this movie when it pulls a stunning set-piece on the boat with a snake. The VFX is top notch. The anaconda looks stunning 95% of the time. But what the artist's got right is how beautifully articulated the creature rigging is. You get a sense that the monster is one long muscle and when the muscles contract or constrict something -- it's absolutely stunning. A 500 kg, 10 meter long muscle crushing human bones like twigs. It's scary.

In the Third Act, this movie goes bonkers. It's everything the original movie should have been and more. Now the Director Duo starts throwing idea after idea at us. There are a dozen set-pieces back-to-back. Anacondas come out of the woodwork and there's real suspense and tension here. The big idea here is not hiding the monster like in most creature features. Our primal fear about snakes is evoked by it's unnerving movement. How it slithers and coils and constricts to crush bones. There are lingering shots of the creature's behavior as it snakes through the trees which are beautifully composed. The snake is genuinely scary at times. There are big homages to the original Anaconda (1997), Jurassic Park, and Predator. And the Villain/Protagonist goes full send in all his scenes. He's either chewing raw snake meat or the scenery. Sometimes both. And somehow he makes it work.

There are major problems with this film. But it does the creature stuff beautifully. If any movie deserves to be a cult classic, it is this one. This is Godzilla Minus One level fun.

With the new Anaconda movie starring Jack Black and Paul Rudd coming out, I was surprised to see that another Anaconda movie from China was released in 2024. I love jungle adventure horror movies featuring creatures or oversized animals, and even though many of them are not particularly high quality, I usually have a good time watching them. This film is a reinterpretation of the 1997 movie and uses many of the same elements while differentiating itself enough to avoid feeling like a complete copy.

The story follows a group of circus athletes traveling by boat through a rainforest. Things quickly stop going according to plan, and they encounter a mysterious man along the way. As if that were not enough, they also become targets of multiple giant snakes.

The movie is very much a mixed bag, as it has several positive aspects but also plenty of flaws. Starting with the snakes themselves, the giant anaconda is rarely as intimidating as it is in this film. It is massive, features a terrifying open mouth as it attacks its victims, and creates a genuinely threatening presence within the rainforest. On the other hand, there are scenes where it moves far too quickly and with a jiggly motion that does not match its size, making it look more silly than scary. The intelligence of the anaconda also shifts depending on what the plot requires. In some scenes it appears unnaturally smart, while in others it becomes easily distracted or simply chooses not to attack so that characters can survive.

The visual effects vary greatly in quality. At times the CGI looks surprisingly convincing, although I would have loved to see more practical effects. In other moments, however, the effects look cheap and make the scenes difficult to take seriously. The same inconsistency applies to the acting. Some performances are rather weak, while others stand out more positively, especially the mysterious man.

The movie frequently shifts between being a highly enjoyable jungle adventure with dangerous snakes stalking their prey and scenes filled with over the top nonsense that completely ignore the laws of physics. Logic is something you need to abandon entirely while watching this film, as many moments simply do not make sense. Still, if you are willing to overlook these issues, there is a fun creature feature hidden beneath the flaws. While I do not think it is as entertaining as the 1997 movie, I ultimately had a good time with it. [6,3/10]

Before to watch the American remake/reboot later this year, check out this Chinese remake which is just a crazy and fun as the original with even meaner giant snakes. I had a lot of fun with this film and found it entertaining even though it didn't have an Ice Cube and J-Lo. The CGI isn't that bad and I loved the design of the main anaconda. It's also very interesting how the Chinese culture is integrated in the story and makes it different than the original film.

A re-imagining of the 1997 action-horror film about a crew of documentary filmmakers in search of a giant, deadly snake in the Amazon.

Well doggy, the movie started off pretty good but as soon as we get to the circus folks the flick takes a downward turn and never recovers. It gets rather boring, to be honest.

Maybe it's the thin story-line that requires a lot of useless scenes to pad it's already short running time. Or maybe it's the rather poor directing. Could it be the acting? When we deal with foreign films and subtitles it's always hard to examine the acting because we're reading the writing on the screen.

I will say this, the saving grace and only reason I gave it two stars are the two females and their abundant cleavage. Without those, it's a dud.