Steven Spielberg had a shark problem when he made Jaws, in that it didn’t look very good, so he had to devise methods for creating a sense of menace around it when he couldn’t show it in the detail he would have liked. Fifty years later, Tom Gormican is not aware he has a snake problem in his reboot/remake/spiritual sequel/metasequel of Anaconda, so he shows this shitty looking digital reptile randomly, whenever he feels like it, without building up any sense of menace whatsoever, as if a sinister score and some ominous ripples in the water had zero value. This is what a half century of cinematic “progress” has wrought.

There would be any number of entry points to discussing why the 2025 Anaconda doesn’t work, but the snake is a good place to start. The reason why many of us loved Luis Llosa’s 1997 version of Anaconda was because it gave us a snake that could squeeze the oxygen out of your body, crush your bones until they were dust, or consume you and regurgitate you, with your only remaining instinct prior to expiring being a cheeky wink at the remaining survivors. Yep, that’s how Jon Voight’s character went out in that movie.

A snake that can do all those things? Should be a slam dunk. The snake in this movie, though, is an absurd creation that doesn’t possess any of the physicality or tactility implicit in those three different methods of murder in the previous paragraph. Sometimes it travels by water, but it seems a lot more likely to appear out of nowhere from anywhere – a tree, a bush, the sky – while hovering a couple meters off the ground if it wants to. It’s digital slop that appears when the story needs Jack Black to run through the jungle with a stunned warthog duct-taped to his back, and if that sounds funny, you’re vastly overestimating Gormican’s ability to make it so.

Gormican appears to have been considered a match for this movie, though he did also co-wrote the screenplay with Kevin Etten, for no other reason than that he made another movie that’s drowning in self references. That may have worked well enough for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and perhaps the powers that be thought the same comedic energy produced by Nic Cage in that movie could be produced by Black and Paul Rudd here — not playing themselves in this case, but playing a recognisable variation of every role either actor has ever played. There are actors who do play themselves in this movie, but they are guarded surprises, and we’ll let Anaconda have this much at least.

Instead Black and Rudd play former film school buddies Doug and Griff, respectively, who are now in their 40s (actually, both actors are 56) but never achieved lift-off in their hoped for film careers. Griff tried and didn’t succeed – we see him fired from work as a featured extra on a TV show because he can’t figure out how to say his one line of dialogue. Doug never tried at all, and has now settled into a “B or B+ life” as a wedding videographer.

Doug’s wife (Ione Skye) throws him a surprise birthday party at which they haul out a sasquatch movie the guys made when they were teens, which also featured Claire (Thandiwe Newton) and Kenny (Steve Zahn). Having whet Doug’s appetite with the nostalgia, Griff then reveals that he’s improbably secured the rights to remake the original Anaconda, and hopes to do it guerilla style with Doug directing, Griff and Claire starring, and Kenny providing unspecified logistics. All they need is a shooting spot in the Brazilian rainforest, a local snake handler (Selton Mello) to wrangle a decent enough looking villain, and a shoestring budget. Against his better judgment, Doug agrees, and they are off on an adventure that will bring them in contact with the local criminal element, as well as a snake a lot larger than the one their wrangler was supposed to wrangle.

This is not a bad idea, but for it to work, the movie has to offer us some baseline of credibility. We never get anything remotely like that as these four doofuses head off into the wilderness with less than half of a clue, and not a smidgen of the minimal support required for even a guerilla shoot that has any hope of becoming an actual movie. It’s just one of the examples of the way this script is underthought. Because the three guys are each more deluded than the next, with only Claire providing any modicum of level headedness, we also don’t like them the way we’re supposed to – which is almost never a problem for characters played by Black and Rudd. That it’s a problem here really gives you a sense what Anaconda is up against, and the paper thin drawing of their characters is a big culprit.

In fact, the only actor in this cast who really connects is Mello as the snake wrangler, Santiago. He has some genuinely funny moments as a guy just enough touched in the head to consider his snake to be his best friend, while also providing a credible facsimile of real snake handling. That this same man played the disappeared father in last year’s I’m Still Here is a pretty incredible indication of his range of abilities. He’s the film’s only real saving grace.

Unfortunately, Anaconda relies a lot more on Rudd and Black and Zahn, the latter of whom was once a gifted comedic presence but has lately embodied one-note dimwittedness. Because the script doesn’t know what it’s doing or how to bring us the satisfying rewards built into the concept, it wastes time on unnecessary diversions like Zahn having to wee on Black after Black is bitten by a spider, which is a problem because Zahn’s character is shy about public urination. If this is the way you’ve ended up spending seven minutes of your 99-minute snake movie, you’re clearly doing something wrong.

The original Anaconda was not, of course, the only Anaconda film. There were five others before this one, only one of which had a proper theatrical release. And though this critic is not qualified to comment on any other than the first, one of the reasons that first was good was because it really chewed these characters up and spat them out, like a proper horror movie. The 2025 Anaconda? It was advertised in cinemas prior to Zootopia 2. That neutering for all ages is another bit of unwanted “progress” in the cinematic landscape, and another reason this snake just lies there limply, even when it’s at its most erect and ridiculous.

 

Anaconda is currently playing in cinemas.