Da She 2

Giant snake meets Monster Island for the shipwreck survivors of this film. The plot of this film may be ludicrous but it's so much fun to see all the different monsters on the island of which the title snake is but one. A film in which the snake eating other monsters is just as fun as the snake eating humans and of course there has to be baby snakes as well to add to the chaos. For fans of these types of films, this film is highly entertaining and engaging from beginning to end no matter how crazier it gets as it gets to the climax. Not your typical giant snake/monster kaiju film and so much better for it.

After going on a pleasure boat ride, a group of strangers are shipwrecked on an island where a massive snake and numerous other creatures are found roaming the area forcing the dwindling group of survivors to brave the dangers of the island to come together again and get off the island alive.

This was a fairly fun and likable genre follow-up. One of the finer features present here is the engaging setup which allows the film to work with more than just a straightforward killer-snake-on-the-loose type of feature. While initially starting off in that vein with the shipwreck stranding the group there and having to fend for themselves in the environment while they're there, the presence of the creatures on the island presenting a series of challenges to overcome keep this one moving along nicely. The main snake attacks are just a precursor to the other creatures found there as the island being found to contain various other creatures beyond just the massive snake as the series of obstacles presented here allow for the incorporation of several solid attempts at building jungle-adventure scenarios for the scores of survivors to overcome as they make their way through the island and get back together so they can survive. That provides quite a lot of fun to go through the series of attacks and encounters featured here. The immediate sight of the massive snake emerging to the group on the beach and sending the fleeing and panicked survivors flying into the air as the creature slithers underneath to swallow them whole. This appropriately sets the stage for the group to get separated with the believable reveal of the snake swallowing others to prepare for the hatching of its young as this allows the regurgitated bodies to encounter the hatching snakes in an underground cave for a secondary fantastic sequence using the more realistic size to great effect. The second half offers up some gloriously cheesy fun with the discovery of other creatures living on the island as confrontations with ravenous flying fish or gigantic frogs bring about other great encounters where the massive size of the creatures presents some fun obstacles to overcome. This is where the action picks up nicely and has some great ideas as well as some fun concepts to get them to safety while dealing with the creatures, providing a lot to like with this one. There are some drawbacks to be had with this one. Among its bigger detriments is the unnecessary means it splits up the team of survivors to have their separate adventures on the island as this doesn't serve the film as well as it should've been. We're barely introduced to the group before they get stranded and thus separated on the island so there's no point in doing this for the characterizations and banding together to find a way of stopping the creatures from killing them would've been a lot more worthwhile than having the group on opposite sides of the island working their way back together as it has setup here. As well, the cheesy CGI for the creature tends to highlight a comical issue in the snake constantly changing sizes depending on the scene itself, switching from something that looks to be the size of a football field to a more-reasonable-if-still-massive forty-to-fifty feet pretty frequently. This can make the effects here seem far more underwhelming than they would otherwise considering some of the other shots here, being the main drawbacks on display here.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.

A Dolphin-spotting pleasure cruise turns into a nightmare when a tour boat is sunk sending survivors to an island inhabited by monsters from an abandoned lab project gone very wrong. With CGI at least as good as any Asylum offering, among the nasties are the titular 500' snake and her babies, a vicious school of big flying Piranhas and a massive acid-blooded Toad with a projectile Tongue that can rip the flesh from your bones. But the charm lies in the broken English subtitles and stilted acting that only the Chinese can manage to pull off with a straight face. Actually not too bad, considering what it is!