Bet nobody had an Anaconda franchise reboot with Jack Black and Paul Rudd on their future tense bingo card during 2024. And yet here we are. The festive season always brings surprises, and a 12A/PG-13 remake of a Jennifer Lopez animal horror is in our stocking this year. You get what you deserve. Anaconda was, of course, the daft 1997 adventure horror film that surprised everybody with: a) its A-list cast, and b) its success at the box office. Despite being nominated for multiple Razzies, being “blessed” with an extraordinarily bonkers performance from Jon Voight, having the voice actor of Freddy Jones from classic Scooby Doo perform the “hisses” (It’s true! Check it out) and showcasing questionable FX… it did become a cult movie. There have been four sequels (in name only and mostly buried on multimedia channels) and one Chinese remake in 2024 (also known as “Hundred Poisons Rampage”. It’s true! Check it out. Again.) So, a new version shouldn’t come as a surprise. But the fact that it stars the aforementioned actors and is directed by the maker of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (namely, Tom Gormican) is a bit of a curveball. The film also features Thandiwe Newton, Daniela Melchior, and Steve Zahn in leading parts and was mostly shot in Queensland, Australia (doubling for the Amazon) at the start of 2025. As everybody must be aware by now (especially with the hideously spoiler-packed trailers), this is a meta-sequel. In other words, it fully acknowledges the presence of the 90s snake movie in the “real world” and has that as a deus ex machina for another Amazonian excursion in the present day. With all that in mind, does it bite hard or just suck?

 

After a relatively pointless and dull prologue that introduces Melchior’s fleeing character (the Lara Croft-ish Ana Almedia) in the Amazon, we are introduced to Doug McAllister (Black) and Ronald “Griff” Griffen (Rudd). Doug is a wedding videographer who keeps trying to sneak horror elements into his work, whereas Griff is a failed actor who built his reputation on a role as a background character in the TV show “SWAT” and is regularly fired for chewing the scenery. During a birthday party for Doug, Griff reunites with his old buddy, along with joint BFFs Claire (Newton) and Kenny (Zahn). In their teenage years, they all shared a passion for amateur filmmaking and made low-budget horrors. At this point, Griff unexpectedly announces that he has lucked into gaining the franchise rights for “Anaconda”, a favourite movie for all four of them when it was first released. It drives Doug to write a new version of the story and pool their resources to film it on location. It all seems to be coming together nicely when they hire a snake wrangler (and his beloved pet) to film the creature scenes, but then things start to fall apart. It’s not the only snake in the jungle, and instead of filming “Anaconda”, they’re suddenly in the story for real.

 

Putting things into context, this version of Anaconda is 10% snake and 1% horror, with the remaining 89% being filtered into a silly wish-fulfilment buddy movie that is somewhere around the ballpark of Jumanji, City Slickers and The Hangover. Just not as funny or coherent as any of those examples. It’s disappointing, as it seems to have quite a lot of promise at the beginning and with the meta-film angle. Doug is established as a horror fan by trying to insert monsters into his production and beef-up proceedings. He also has film posters for Dario Argento’s Inferno, The Blob, and Fright Night prominently placed in his office. Cool. A plot arc is initiated by a character walking past the poster of the original film in a studio. And there’s a lovely sequence where the four buddies and their social circle gather to watch a sweary (with censored bleeps) amateur horror they made in their youth (“The Quatch”). It all looks like it’s going to be knowing fun and a neat variant on meta-horror in the style of Scream or something similar.

 

Easily the best parts are when the characters discuss the original movie and mock Jon Voight’s accent or wonder why Eric Stolz and J-Lo agreed to take part. Then there are other nice little details, like the fact that Doug’s new screenplay is titled “The Anaconda” (riffing on the Hollywood practice of adding “The” to distinguish a remake or sequel from the original). When Ana joins the team, Griff sarcastically suggests that they should rename it “Ana Conda” (which is actually a callback to Jack Black’s “High Fidelity” character in 2000). When Newton’s character (really underused otherwise) acts badly in the footage, it feels like a spot-on caricature by her. And some of the wisecracks about moviemaking are genuinely funny. Realising that they could add some relevant “social horror” to the plot of their film, Doug is unironically declared to be the “white Jordan Peele”. In several in-jokes, Sony studios themselves are openly mocked for messing up the franchise and continually announcing reboots. The SFX on the snakes (big and small) are CGI but actually look pretty good for the most part. However, you know there are some “buts” coming, don’t you…?

 

Once the crew hits the Amazon, gets into the filming, and messes up the first scene with the “tame” snake, it all starts to go downhill. There’s nothing wrong with childish or silly humour, but Anaconda goes big on it once the “real” snake makes its presence felt. And whilst there are one or two decent jump-scares and a few good gags, the misses far outweigh the hits where those are concerned. The goodwill built up by the movie references and playful interplay between the wannabe film stars starts to deflate rapidly under the tonnage of puerile jokes and whipped-to-death cliches, which lose the sense of irony in massive proportions. For example, one long-running joke about a character being “pee-shy” (unable to urinate in public) goes on forever and is just misjudged. Do any grown adults really believe that pissing on a spider bite is necessary, or that saying, “Whizz on me!!” thirty times is the pinnacle of hilarity? Another annoying sequence that outstays its welcome is the 5-minute discussion about head-butting. Yes, really. And don’t even get started on the cast singing “Snakety-Snake” at a snake funeral. Urgh!

 

The problem is that the narrative goes from decent premise and promising set-ups to ridiculous pratfalls and Naked Gun type gagfests. We’re not expecting realism for God’s sake, but the fact that a humongous snake is just there, fairly close to civilisation and without any kind of explanation or even WTFs (this is a PG-13 after all), just beggars belief. It’s more than three times the size of the one in the original FFS! No one thinks to comment on that?! What makes it even worse is that the opening sub-plot, which totally wastes the presence of Melchior in all respects, just sizzles out as an afterthought and is pretty much forgotten about by the time of the climax (which BTW wastes the potential of another sub-plot). It all hinges on just how invested you are in the plight of Black and Rudd’s characters, who are basically playing exaggerated versions of themselves, but with oddly unlikable traits that don’t endear you towards them as such. Newton’s character is underused, and there is (despite what Doug says) absolutely no chemistry between her and Griff. Zahn’s character is a little annoying and badly defined as well, and the “surprise” (fully expected thanks to the Internet) cameos are basically nothing-sauce.

 

There was a good, fun, and irreverent movie in here somewhere, but it’s all just been lost in the reshoots and emphasis on dopey “laughs”. At its core, it’s just one of those middle-aged wish-fulfilment films about trying to realise lost dreams from your youth. Just that this one occasionally references a giant snake movie. Don’t forget that this is a “family-oriented” PG-12 film. So, no half-digested corpses or bitten-off body parts. But you gotta cram those feels and life lessons in there. Chase your dreams (even if it bankrupts your family and potentially leaves them in the lurch), lie to your friends if it’s for a good cause, and make fun of substance addiction because it is absolutely hilarious (unless someone dies). You know the sort of thing. Unfortunately. But what do we know? At our screening, a group of neighbouring viewers laughed themselves dry, whilst Jack Black jogged through the undergrowth piggy-backing a scared boar, and we sat there stony-faced. Humour is subjective after all. And lots of people may enjoy it for what it is. In this case, however, you can’t help but feel that more than a few horror fans might find this a teeny bit insulting, rather than a laff riot. Time will tell, but, yeah, not good from this writer’s perspective.