ANACONDA (1997)
Updated: Dec 12, 2022
An Entertaining but Standard B-Movie Transplanted to the 90s
Grade: C
**Spoiler Alert!**
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a group of people on a vessel in the middle of nowhere are hunted by an inhuman monster. On board with them is a person intent on nabbing the creature no matter the cost. This is the basic premise for several classic monster films, including Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Jaws (1975) and Alien (1979). Each of these movies offers something new and different to make them memorable, whether it be the monster (Creature….), the story’s execution (Jaws), or both (Alien). Then there’s Anaconda, which borrows multiple elements from at least two of these movies with little of their original charm. Telling the story of a film crew and a psychotic hunter battling a gigantic snake in the Amazon, Anaconda is a serviceable monster movie, sporting a fine cast and some rather good action scenes. But there is little about it to make it more than just an entertaining movie.
Anaconda opens with a standard “Unseen Horror Attacks Helpless Individual” scene on a boat. The individual here is played by Danny Trejo, who for some reason starts frantically screaming into his boat’s radio before the giant snake even reveals itself to him. After it does, he climbs desperately onto the mast and, in a rather downer twist, decides to his gun on himself rather than let himself be eaten alive. We are then introduced to the film crew, which includes Jennifer Lopez as director Terri Flores, Ice Cube as cameraman Danny Rich, Eric Stoltz as Professor Steven Cale, and Owen Wilson as sound engineer Gary Dixon. They board a riverboat with the intention of finding and documenting a hidden Native American tribe somewhere in the jungle known as the Shirishamas. Most of these players are fairly likeable and their actors give great performances, but their intelligence levels vary. Flores, for example, is distrustful of Jon Voight’s character, but at the same time insists on waiting for a lost crewmember when all signs point to him being dead. Despite this, they avoid falling into the trap of being so unlikeable that you want the monster to kill them; they really care for each other.
Speaking of John Voight, he plays one of those characters that seems to have been factory farmed to make the audience hate him. That character is Paul Serone, a snake hunter the crew rescues from a wreck who is determined to capture the anaconda. Before he is even revealed to be a bad guy, he does so many contemptible things, including leering disgustingly at Flores, reacting passively to dangerous situations going on (when asked to help someone, he says “Maybe some other time”), and acting controlling towards the rest of the crew. All throughout the movie, he looks completely crazy, and audiences can tell that he is no good long before the protagonists do. He is clearly inspired by Robert Shaw’s shark hunter character Quint from Jaws. But whereas Quint was somewhat likeable, had charm and a compelling backstory for hating sharks, Serone is totally unlikeable, has no charm, and just wants to hunt snakes (oh, and he has a scar on his neck that apparently a snake gave him). At best, he could be seen as unintentionally hilarious.
The film’s script is another handicap. It contains several obviously dumb decisions by the characters as well as cliches that became tired long before 1997. In addition to trusting an obviously insane man, we have Dixon taking sides with Serone to capture the anaconda after learning there was money in the snake hunting business. This character had been given so little development up to this point that his decision is very much out of left field. In one scene we have two characters stopping what they’re doing and making out in a dark jungle. In another, we have a man who insists on going down alone to clear up a propellor, saying he will be fine. In both these cases, the outcomes are obvious. Sometimes these cliches are flipped: instead of getting attacked by the snake, the two lovers are attacked by a wild boar that is immediately killed by Serone. And the trouble encountered by the man clearing up the propeller is arguably more shocking than the kind we expected. A cliché that is not flipped, though, is the injured monster who jumps back for one last attack before finally being killed.
The production value is where most of Anaconda’s appeal lies. The action scenes are very well-staged, from the first struggle with the anaconda at night to the final showdown in an abandoned hut along the river. Much effort clearly went into these scenes, and they succeed in creating suspense and excitement in the viewer. Other aspects of the production, though, vary in their quality. The anaconda itself, like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993), is a combination of computer effects and animatronics. The animatronic snake is somewhat convincing, but the CGI effects have not aged well. I don’t know if they were any better in 1997, but today they are obviously CGI. Another thing I found obvious was one shot where the boat backs away from rocks it ran aground on; in the background, you can see a waterfall falling up, signifying that this is clearly reversed footage. An effect that is impressive, however, is the now-famous segment where camera’s point of view is inside the snake’s throat looking out as it is about to swallow someone whole. This is not a perspective often depicted on film, and in Anaconda it is done admirably.
Anaconda is a competently made and overall entertaining film, but it won’t go down in history as a timeless classic like the other movies that inspired it. If it had provided a satirical or deliberately comedic twist on its genre, like Airplane! (1980) or The Cabin in the Woods (2011), it might have become something truly special. As is, it’s best to appreciate it as an old B-movie from the 1950s or 60s, complete with substandard special effects and wrongheaded decisions by the characters. Still, the action is exciting and most of the characters work well off each other.
Director: Luis Llosa
Producers: Verna Harrah, Carol Little, Leonard Rabinowitz
Screenplay: Hans Bauer, Jim Cash, Jack Epps, Jr.
Cast: Jennifer Lopez (Terri Flores), Ice Cube (Danny Rich), Jon Voight (Paul Serone), Eric Stoltz (Dr. Steven Cale), Kari Wuhrer (Denise Kahlberg), Jonathan Hyde (Warren Westridge), Owen Wilson (Gary Dixon), Vincent Castellanos (Mateo), Danny Trejo (Poacher)
Rated: PG-13 (for intense adventure violence, and for brief language and sensuality)
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