Megaboa

Terrible acting, casting, directing and script but the worst was the 1970"s cartoon quality special affects of a 200+ foot snake with all the actors claiming it was "50 to 60 feet". You could make a better jungle thriller with actual college students in a park with a rubber snake and filmed on iphones. Probably the only redeeming quality of this film is the great drone shots of bare wilderness but you can easily skip through this one in under 10 minutes without missing any plot or thrills.

When I stumbled upon the 2021 movie "Megaboa" here in 2022, of course I had to sit down and watch it. I do find these gargantuan creature features to be fun to watch. Sure, most of them are really, really bad, but still, every now and again there is one that proves enjoyable.

And when I saw The Asylum's name on the screen, I have to admit that I went from having zero expectations to the movie to thinking 'oh no'. But still, I carried on and opted to watch "Megaboa".

Luckily then "Megaboa" is not the archetypical mockbuster that The Asylum is mostly known for, so on that account then it was a step in the right direction. But "Megaboa" wasn't exactly a top notch creature feature.

The storyline told in "Megaboa", as written by Alex Heerman, was pretty generic and typical for a creature feature. So you are not in for anything grand here.

Then there was the matter of the cast ensemble and the acting performances. Well, it is no secret that with a movie such as "Megaboa" then there is a snowball's chance in Hell of you being in for Shakespearian performances or anything even overly great. And on that note, then "Megaboa" delivered what was expected. It should be said that the movie has Eric Roberts listed as the main attraction, and boy is he cringeworthy to watch as he stumbles through what can only be guessed is supposed to be acting and delivering dialogue.

Visually then "Megaboa" was actually adequate. I mean, the CGI animated snake looked fair enough. It wasn't spectacular CGI, but it worked out well enough for a movie such as this.

If you enjoy monstrous creature movies, then "Megaboa" is not the best of options.

My rating of "Megaboa" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

I have built up an imunity or say tolerance to low budget monster movies which paid off big time on this Asylum entry. You have to almost root for the CGI snakes because systematically removing bad actors seems like the right thing. The positive things are: Awesome music score by Mikel Shane Prather and Chris Cano, beautiful scenery and you can see the actors are trying their best with the script. The negative things: Everything else for 90 minutes. I did enjoy Eric Roberts looking on a laptop of drone footage (excellent WiFi in the jungle btw) and stating "that's the biggest snake I ever seen Benji, bigger than a Titanaboa that's the...Megaboa" before calmly sitting back down in his lawn chair as said snake eats his students.

Strictly for those die-hards of a disposition to enjoy snake thrills (also some spider thrills). Bigger than Titanoboa, that's a Megaboa! Don't look for subtlety or nuance, just lots of schlock snake fun.

Megaboa" is a pretty by-the-numbers creature feature, you know the usual drill. Cardboard characters walk through the woods because you can film without permits there, get eaten, people mourn for about ten seconds and on to the next one. This movie doesn't stray much from that formula, and would be unremarkable if it wasn't for the Eric Roberts material.

Roberts is in this movie a lot more than I expected, actually. Usually B-movies like this just get him for a day and keep him in one location to get their name actor footage as quickly and cheaply as possible. There's a lot of talk about famous people phoning in performances, but Roberts often does that literally. His 'characters' in creature features are actually authority figures (generals, federal agents, things like that) that spend all their screen time speaking on the phone or through a headset. Just to see him in the same shot as the other characters was pretty shocking to me.

The best part of this movie is how laid-back his character is while there's a megaboa devouring everyone. I don't know if he had weed on him but geez, he doesn't care at all! He looks at drone footage of a gigantic, agressive snake like he's watching "Blue's Clues". My students are about to die? Ah, they've probably had a good life. His Southern drawl and big white smile just add to the fun. Did I mention he's in a lawn chair for much of the movie? And hell, a snake eating people will never not be entertaining, even with dollar store CGI and a truly anti-climactic ending. I guess I... recommend it?