Anaconda Kuang Mang Zhi Zai

Well I gotta admit I only watched this just to see if someone would try to reach Jon Voight's hamminess levels from the original 1997 movie lol. While the antagonist doesn't go full out insane like Jon Voight did, he did have quite a number of moments where you could tell the guy was giving it his all and if you ask me, the antagonist was the most memorable character here too.

I actually do think this remake had some bits of action that were better when compared to the original, it's nothing out of this world but some scenes had more fast paced action than the original. I did like seeing how this movie went about recreating scenes from the original in a much different way and it actually also took a few notes from the 2nd Anaconda movie.

I personally thought that the CG snake would sometimes look rather acceptable but suddenly look outright bad in other scenes but hey the same could be said about the original. I actually was hoping they would go with a combination of using both animatronics and CGI.

I say it's worth watching if you're a fan of the original movie, because it really is just as cheesy as the original movie filled with scenes you're 'supposed to take serious' but you can't because they're so insanely ridiculous. I'll be the first to admit, it's definitely a bad movie but I think it's a bad movie where you can have a bit of fun watching it lol.

A re-imagining of the 1997 action-horror film about a crew of documentary filmmakers in search of a giant, deadly snake in the Amazon.

Well doggy, the movie started off pretty good but as soon as we get to the circus folks the flick takes a downward turn and never recovers. It gets rather boring, to be honest.

Maybe it's the thin story-line that requires a lot of useless scenes to pad it's already short running time. Or maybe it's the rather poor directing. Could it be the acting? When we deal with foreign films and subtitles it's always hard to examine the acting because we're reading the writing on the screen.

I will say this, the saving grace and only reason I gave it two stars are the two females and their abundant cleavage. Without those, it's a dud.

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.

At only 80 minutes, Anaconda (2024) is worth your time if you enjoy giant creature features. However, there's not enough material here to warrant watching it more than once. The film gets off to a hasty start, it's not even clear how many people are on the boat until midpoint through the movie. It's safe to say character development wasn't a priority in this film, the closest we ever get to a character backstory is one of the female characters saying that chocolate reminds her of her late brother. One positive aspect of this film is that the main human villain seems more intimidating than the original's Jon Voight. In the original, I always thought it was embarrassing how the characters let the out-of-shape Voight push them around. This villain is a much more typical tough bad guy.

Ultimately, an Anaconda film will always be judged by the quality of its snake action. This Chinese adaptation does a respectable but flawed job. Midway through the film, I began to think that I had found a hidden gem. The initial snake attack on the boat is as good as the original's best scenes. But in the second half, you realize why the film is only 80 minutes. The action becomes very repetitive with both the main characters and villain somehow escaping death multiple times. The entire second half of the film is basically the characters sitting in a jungle and being used as bait.

Overall, Anaconda is worth having on as background noise for fans of creature features. 5/10.