Director: Charlie Steeds
Year: 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Snake
Plot:
Heading out on a canoeing trip, a group of friends decides to head down a river through the local swamp, which leads them to the home of a monstrous man-eating snake that lives in the river they’re traveling through, forcing them to find a way of dealing with the snake to get out alive.
Review:
Overall, this was a solid enough cheesy creature feature. Among the better aspects here is a straightforward, simple story that gives this the chance to generate some enjoyable moments. The whole setup here, focusing on the guys’ trip out into the wilderness where they manage to come across the riverbank that houses the massive snake’s breeding ground, which they’ve intruded upon and are now being chased across the swamp by the creature and her captors, serves to introduce everything necessary for the story rather nicely. It gives the group just enough backstory to make them feel like genuine friends and that the trip has been earned as a means of trying to accomplish something one last time for the thrill, but that they’ve happened upon the wrong place at the wrong time. As well, with just enough bits about the deranged family in the swamp looking to use out-of-towners as snake food, as that carries on a family tradition that the family practices, completing the series of setups throughout here.
This provides some great fun with the action taking on a fun turn with a nice mix of attributes and aesthetics. The initial idea of using the snake as a practical prop and letting it interact with the cast makes for a nice bit of cheesy, old-school flavored fun when the puppet head and tail are used to showcase it swimming through the river after them, or wrapping around a victim and attacking, giving these scenes a lot of character. Featuring such fun aspects as the snake attack on the group while canoeing through the water or the chases along the rocky underbrush while on shore, these are quite fun and manage to highlight the creature action. The second half, focusing on the psycho family controlling the snake, comes into play with the type of backwoods hillbilly type of chases and encounters throughout the woods as they get them ready for the snake, changing up the kind of action so it offers something different than just traditional cheesy creature action for some positive points here.
That point, though, ends up being one of the main drawbacks to be had against the film. The majority of the last half focuses on the interactions with the backwoods hillbilly family living deep in the swamp, feeding city-dwellers who come there to the massive snake they house and care for, which carries some exciting enough action scenes, but does so at the expense of the killer snake action. What had been a reasonably fun cheesy creature feature suddenly turns into a grimy, dirty grindhouse-style genre effort that works well enough on its own, but seems to be from a different film entirely, so that the snake isn’t as much of a threat. It’s cliched and predictable, holding it back even further with the change of tone present here, keeping the tone pretty inconsistent over time as it goes along. As well, with the cheesy special effects being dominated by the goofy puppet and its unnatural reactions trying to play everything off, there are some problems to be had with the film.
Overview: ***.5/5
A generally solid cheesy creature feature, there’s a lot to like with this one, which manages to mix enough likable factors to hold it up over a few minor drawbacks that keep it down. Those with an interest in this style of genre fare or who are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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