Shen hai she nan

I found my way to the 2022 Chinese creature feature "Deep Sea Mutant Snake" as part of a marathon of Chinese monster movies. Unfortunately the majority of the movies were mediocre at best, so I wasn't really harboring much of any expectations to this 2022 movie from writer and director Wu Yang.

Yet, I still opted to watch the movie, since I had never seen it before, nor actually heard about it. And I am glad that I did, because "Deep Sea Mutant Snake" was actually one of the better of these numerous Chinese creature features that I have recently sat through.

The storyline in "Deep Sea Mutant Snake", as written by Wu Yang, is a pretty straight forward one, even for a creature feature with monstrous, gargantuan snakes. But there is still something enjoyable and entertaining about it, whilst it is somewhat generic in nature.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but they had a fair collection of actors and actresses on the cast list to portray the various roles and to bring both the characters and storyline to life on the screen.

Something that definitely kept "Deep Sea Mutant Snake" afloat and sort of set it aside from many others of the same type of Chinese movies was the special effects. The CGI effects in "Deep Sea Mutant Snake" was good. In fact, it was actually the best CGI rendered effects I have seen in the many Chinese creature features I have recently sat through. And with it being a movie with a gargantuan snake, and other creatures, then having proper and believable effects is a make or break factor.

If you enjoy creature features, then "Deep Sea Mutant Snake" from writer and director Wu Yang, is well worth taking 80 minutes to sit down and watch.

My rating of "Deep Sea Mutant Snake" lands on a six out of ten stars.

Okay, so the title pretty much says it all, so if you've seen don't enjoy giant snake movies, why bother with this one? This being said, if you've seen do enjoy giant snake movies then you'll have a lot of fun with this ridiculous yet fun and entertaining monster film and make no mistake, this is a giant monster movie in the tradition of a kaiju film. The CGI FX (for the most part) are serviceable and the human characters are just interesting enough to keep you interested in what goes on in the plot, but rest assured, you come for the monster mayhem; you get the Monster Mayhem! The film is not pretending to be anything other than what it is and you'll enjoy it more for that reason.

After the death of his girlfriend, a government agent looks into the disappearance by observing an employee on a ship to get answers, but when the ship is overrun with snakes from the experiment must get survivors off the ship to a deserted island where they find more creatures awaiting them.

This was a spectacular effort that has quite a lot to like about it. One of the biggest factors going for it is a standout story that manages to keep this one interesting as it goes along with some fun reveals as it goes. The cold open providing hints as to the military experiment that results in the genetically modified snakes needing to be destroyed and their eventual escape by fighting back features the kind of strong start to get this going early on introducing the corporation's desire to keep everything secret so their team gets taken out trying to accomplish that. The resulting investigation by her boyfriend who discovers the secret operative on the cruise and decides to look into everything which causes him to discover the results of their experiments looking to secure greater qualities of snake skin for designer material from larger snakes gives everything full context and allows for a generally great time here. The other rather impressive feature of the film is a stellar series of attacks and action scenes that are exceptionally fun. The opening attempt by the corporation to kill their snakes in the facility and surrounding fields only for the snakes to fight back results in spectacular sequences featuring the creatures swarming the execution crew taking them out with bites or crashing an escaping vehicle into something to causing it to explode in extended sequences while the massive monster-sized version takes out stragglers is the kind of gloriously cheesy starting point to the fun found here. The later sequences, with the snakes shown taking over the cruise ship in equally extended scenes squirming victims on the main deck, down in the gallery, or dropping out of the vents to grab passengers fleeing through the hallways as they try to escape are just as good producing intriguing attacks. The escape attempt here, where the survivors battle the massive swarms of snakes and the giant creature also on the ship, gives this plenty of cheesy action as well which all comes together with the action in the finale and its cheesy effects for a lot to like. There are some issues to be had with this one. The main detriment present here in the film is a shockingly bizarre turn away from the ship to landing on the deserted island at the halfway point as it feels like two different films stitched together into one finished film. The scenes on the ship are goofy and cheesy in the best way with the creatures swarming the screaming passengers and feeling like a confined creature feature epic, while the low-rent scale of the scenes of the tropical island is somewhat obvious taking the action out of the ship to the jungle which includes mysterious flesh-eating plants or tree-sized spiders for single sequences without much explanation. This does work nicely from an action standpoint talking about what it takes to stop the creature and the tactics used to do that, but it's just how different this feels compared to the first half, and with the goofy effects featured here are the drawbacks on display.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.