Anaconda (1997)

It's pretty damn difficult to impress even the most enthusiast and undemanding horror audiences with a 40 ft. long animatronic snake that – apart from looking silly – also screams at its victims. And yet, strangely enough, the CGI effects & visuals are actually the most pleasing aspects to endure whilst watching "Anaconda". The hopelessly muddled script and the awful performances (coming from a prominent ensemble cast, I may add) form the real disaster here. This could have been a pretty cool big animal creature-feature IF ONLY the creators tried a to make it look less like big-budgeted studio blockbuster and more like an unpretentious and cheesy B-movie! Jon Voight surely seemed to think he was involved in such a production, as his performance is permanently over-the-top and almost deliberately bad. Voight blinks ridiculously all the time and talks in an unidentifiable accent, while the rest of the cast attempts to speak their lines straight-faced and plausible. It's almost pitiful to behold. A seven-headed film crew sails down the mighty Amazon river, hoping to shoot a breakthrough documentary about a nearly extinct tribe of natives. Instead of primitive savages, they encounter a stranded adventurer who claims to know all the dangers of the Amazon jungle and offers to be their guide. Patiently and strategically, he (Paul Sarone) directs the crew towards the territory of the horrific man-eating anaconda. After (far too) many lame and predictable false alarm sequences, the big computer-engineered snake finally begins to reduce the number of passengers on the boat. The grotesque action sequences are okay, I guess, but the interactions between the stereotypical characters are totally unbelievable. Eric Stolz (as the expedition's leader) lies unconscious most of the time, Ice Cube stares at the animals in the jungle as they were his gangster enemies from the ghetto, Owen Wilson looks like he wants to ride the anaconda as it was a rodeo-bull and – worst of all – Jonathan Hyde plays the obnoxious British chap who even carries on golfing after several people have died. As strange as it sounds, Jennifer Lopez honestly plays the most convincing character and gives away the best performance. The plot meanders needlessly and contains several situations that are stupid and inexplicable, like unnatural barricades in the middle of the godforsaken jungle and dynamite-induced snake showers. Luis Llosa's direction is uninspired but at least Bill Butler's camera captures some enchanting images of the South American jungles. Despite having appeared in over 40 movies already, Danny Trejo's role is just a miserable cameo.