Anaconda (1997)
There's a version of Anaconda that works. A giant snake, a panicked crew trapped on a river boat in the Amazon, a scenery-chewing villain, and a cast you'd never expect to share a screen together. That's a recipe for a genuinely enjoyable B-movie night. The version Luis Llosa actually made, though, is something else entirely: a slog that mistakes meandering setup for tension and squanders nearly everything it has going for it.
I came to this one through my World Movie Cup challenge, and I'll admit it gave me pause when I saw it listed among the most popular Peruvian films. Head-scratching doesn't quite cover it. Yes, it was directed by a Peruvian filmmaker and shot in the Amazon, but calling this a Peruvian film in any meaningful cultural sense is a bit like calling a McDonald's built in Paris a French restaurant. The setting is a backdrop, not a soul. Compare that to something like City of God, which is so deeply embedded in its Brazilian context that you couldn't transplant it anywhere else without it falling apart completely. Anaconda could have been shot in a tank in Slough for all the specificity it brings to its location.
Now, I'm not naive. I went in with my expectations already sitting somewhere around ankle height. I know what a 90s creature feature is, and I'm not asking it to be Herzog. Speaking of which, if you want a film that actually wrestles with obsession and the Amazon in a way that gets under your skin, go and watch Fitzcarraldo. But that's not fair game here. The fair question is: does Anaconda succeed as a fun, trashy monster movie? And the answer is mostly no, and the reason is surprisingly simple. The snake barely shows up.
For a film named after its monster, it takes an almost perverse amount of time before the thing gets any meaningful screen time. We're sitting through exposition, boat mechanics, and what feels like a documentary about documentary filmmaking before the title creature deigns to appear. A good creature feature knows that the buildup only works if it's doing something with that time, whether that's ratcheting up dread, building characters you actually care about, or at the very least giving you something fun to watch. Anaconda does none of the above.
Which brings me to the cast, because this is where my frustration really lives. You've got Ice Cube, Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, and a very young Owen Wilson all trudging through the mud together. On paper, that ensemble is already campy gold. The problem is nobody seems to have got the memo that they should be having fun with it. Ice Cube, who showed real charisma in Friday just a couple of years before this, is given almost nothing to work with and seems to know it. Lopez does what she can. Voight goes furthest towards the spirit the film needed, but even he can't rescue a script that doesn't seem sure what it wants to be.
That uncertainty is the real problem. The best bad movies are committed. They go for it with complete conviction, and that commitment is what transforms them into something fun and rewatchable. Anaconda never quite commits. It's not scary enough to work as genuine horror, not funny enough (intentionally or otherwise) to work as camp, and not thrilling enough to work as an action film. It drifts in the space between all three, too cautious to pick a lane.
I've sat through worse during this challenge, I won't pretend otherwise. It's not unwatchable. There are a couple of moments where it gets close to delivering on its own premise, and when the snake finally does arrive in force, there's a flicker of the cheesy joy that should have been running through the whole thing. But a flicker isn't enough. It's a film that keeps you waiting for the creature to show up and put everyone, snake and audience alike, out of their misery.
Two stars. Generous, if I'm honest with myself.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 1997 | Watched: 2026-06-09
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