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.
