Directed by Tom Gormican, Anaconda (2025) follows four childhood friends: Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Kenny (Steve Zahn), and Claire (Thandiwe Newton). Seeking to recapture their youth, they travel to the Amazon to film an amateur remake of the 1997 film Anaconda. Their project unravels when a real giant anaconda emerges, turning the light-hearted shoot into a perilous fight to stay alive. The movie that they’re dying to remake? It might just kill them, literally.
As someone who has always had a love for creature features, Anaconda from 1997 has always been an ultimate guilty pleasure of mine that I always enjoy watching from time to time, despite it being a very cheesy creature horror about a giant killer snake. The sequels for it were awful in comparison to the first film so it was surprising to find out that a reboot of Anaconda was being made, given that the series doesn’t have a massive following. But it was even more surprising to find out this film was actually going to be a meta-reboot of Anaconda made by the same creative duo that made The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which is one of my favorite underrated meta comedies of recent years. This was a truly unusual film to come into existence but I was kind of into the idea of it and was willing to give it a go, even if it wasn’t going to be the best thing ever.
After getting the chance to watch it, I honestly found myself having a good time with this one. While it isn’t as endlessly hilarious as I would have liked it to be, I still found this film to be a fun time as both a meta comedy and a goofy monster flick combined into one. It could have benefited from leaning more into outrageous territory that it sometimes goes into and could have had a bit more of the titular snake involved, but it definitely provides some enjoyable moments and entertaining elements that made this a worthwhile watch for me. Not everyone will be into this film, but I think this may gain fans from specific audiences.
The cast of this film was clearly having a blast with their performances as these quirky characters, playing to their comedic strengths, and they certainly achieve great chemistry as a team. Jack Black and Paul Rudd are a solid duo that really do feel like two best friends with a long history that share similar passions, and their performance leaps off the screen with fun energy. They are hilarious both together and individually throughout the film, each getting their times to shine and get some pretty good laughs out of me.
Surprisingly though the most laughs of this film actually came from Steve Zahn who has some of the most memorable and unexpected moments of comedy that hit you when you least expect it and really make you laugh hard. He’s committed to this weird as hell character, causing even the dumbest of jokes to make me laugh just because of his execution of said jokes. He’s such an underrated gem of an actor that I honestly don’t know why he’s not in more projects.
Thandiwe Newton, who is known to do mostly serious roles, also manages to fit in well with this misfit group full of various styles of humor from their respective cast members. She even shares some solid romantic chemistry with Paul Rudd in the film, which wasn’t expected at all but was unique to see.
Another surprisingly hilarious comedic treasure in this film was Selton Mello as Carlos Santiago Braga, a snake handler who joins the crew on their filming mission. Selton Mello is known to be a famous face in Brazil, having gained national popularity there for his various comedic performances over the years, and he certainly brings that experience to this film with some golden moments of hilarity that he performs wonderfully. The character is so simple yet Selton is able to make him really funny at the most random of times, to the point that his humor sometimes overshadowed the humor of the others.
Daniela Melchior plays the comedic foil of group as the character of Ana Almeida, and while she does deliver a decent performance I did feel she was ultimately underutilized for most of the film, which is unfortunate given she’s proven to be able to deliver her own great form of humor. There are also some very fun cameos included that were a nice little earned bonus that delivers some solid fan service for fans of the 1997 original.
And then of course there is the monstrous Anaconda, who like in every other Anaconda film is an oversized killer serpent hell bent on killing and devouring everything in its path. While the snake is clearly CGI the film does a decent job at making it a terrifyingly fun monster when it’s on screen and managed to actually get a couple jump scares out of me at times. That being said, the enormous reptile is not that heavily present in the film and sometimes has moments done offscreen in what appeared to be attempts to save on budget. On the one hand it is understandable since the film has a reported budget of $45 million but on the other hand I would have preferred to get more scenes with it, as well as would have preferred to see some practical effect scenes done with the snake just like in the 1997 original.
The narrative takes a little bit to get going in its first half before kicking most of the fun off in the second half, but with that said I did appreciate some of the great meta elements this film provides from start to end. With this film being about rebooting a cult classic there are obviously tons of meta jokes involved that make fun of Hollywood remake culture. Some of the jokes about it are pretty obvious but then there are some very clever jokes that I think most film buffs would understand and find hilarious for how much they hit the nail on the head.
While this film doesn’t hesitate to making fun of reboots while making a reboot, the film does also manage to highlight the life of aspiring indie filmmakers that is represented fantastically through the characters. I’ve seen the challenges but also the fun that aspiring filmmakers and their crews, mostly composed of friends, have when they come together to make a movie and how they frequently discuss the process of it in a passionate way. This film accurately depicts this while also being a comedy and monster flick, which I can’t help but appreciate director Tom Gormican and writer Kevin Etten for doing in a time where aspiring indie filmmakers don’t get enough credit.
I would have loved the film to have more scenes of outrageous comedy, similar to what it had in the second half, but at the same time I never found myself bored by the film at any point because of the other elements included. And if there just happens to be fans of the 1997 Anaconda watching this film then they are definitely in for some fun tributes that pay homage to that film.
From a technical side, the film actually looks really beautiful, using practical and on location sets and therefore leaning into the indie filmmaking theme of the film over massive blockbuster sets using heavy amounts of CGI, like a lot of reboots tend to do these days. The only thing that is primarily CGI is the snake itself while the rest is mostly practical, including the action, stunts, and environments. The cinematography is also pretty solid alongside the score by composer David Fleming. Sure this film has its funny track of licensed songs that play at perfect needle drop moments but Fleming’s score definitely deserves some credit for injecting some fun energy into the film.
This may not be on the same level of brilliance as The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent but I still found myself enjoying this film more than I expected, and I appreciated all its meta elements, from the humorous ones to the genuine ones. This film will probably not appeal to everyone but I’m willing to bet it’s going to have some fans out there like the 1997 original flick it is based on. Give it a go like I did and see what you think. I’m going to give Anaconda a B = 86.
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