Living in a remote mountain village, an interrupted wedding ceremony prompts the village elders to enact a long-forgotten ritual sacrifice to appease the Snake God responsible for the disaster, forcing one of the residents to get a team together to stop it before his sister becomes the sacrifice.
This was a fairly enjoyable genre effort. One of the brighter spots here comes from the solid and oftentimes striking setup that allows for a highly intriguing storyline throughout here. The connotations involved in the rural village that take place within their own set of customs and traditions involving how to properly prepare for a marriage or other type of ceremony, the involvement of human sacrifice to quell the creature, and the belief that everything works out in this manner offers a strong starting place for what's to come. The fact that the entire plan for catching the snake rests on kidnapping the one outsider of the family and holding them hostage under such strong guard that they're unable to be rescued until the time is right for the sacrifice ceremony makes for a strong motivation to get the hunters involved to stop the snake before that can take place keeps this moving along nicely by allowing for enough of a look into their mindset while also showing the treatment she's subjected to the carry out the ritual for a rather strong starting place. With this establishing everything nicely in the first half, the rest of the film can deal with some solid enough action to make for an exciting time. Getting enough of a taste of everything with the snake appearing during the cleansing ceremony in the tomb and later striking at the sea-side ceremony where it takes the sacrifice and sets off the rampage in the village where it swallows people whole or sends them flying through the air with the size and strength it possesses. Later attacks, including the lake ambush on the sleazy party goer or striking the henchmen trying to grab the sacrifice, are also quite fun at getting the creature more involved with things as the finale offering up the series of encounters it does where they try to capture the snake in the middle of the forest before turning into the massive rampage at the village. This has some exciting moments, several solid stunt pieces trying to get out of the snake's path as it crashes into things, and the effects needed to make everything work come off exceptionally well with a somewhat surprising outcome for quite a lot to like here. There isn't much to hold it back but it does have some minor drawbacks. One of the main issues present is the somewhat illogical means through which the village agrees to participate in the sacrifice ceremony without much reasoning to keep it going. The entire means of their ceremony makes sense in their initial setup yet to the strange insistence on carrying through with the whole thing being continued on when the knowledge about the snake being captured and produced for the congregation turns them into being absolute jerks to continue their ways as being the human villains when it makes no sense to carry on the ceremony. As well, the series of shots here focusing on the obviously goofy-looking and fake snake, which sprouts a hood for some reason despite being called a python which obviously doesn't have one, does come off a bit weird which are overall enough to give some minor drawbacks to this one.
Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.
