Anaconda (2024) by Hesheng and Qiuliang Xiang

Director: Hesheng Xiang, Qiuliang Xiang

Year: 2024

Country: China/USA

Alternate Titles: Anaconda: Kuang mang shi zhi; Anaconda; Cursed Jungle

Genre: Snake

Plot:

After hearing of a new opportunity, a group of carnival workers decides to head into the local jungle to perform a special show in the area, but when they meet up with a sketchy tracker looking to capture a massive snake rumored to live in the jungle, it drags them into his deadly quest to hunt it.

Review:

Overall, this was a massively fun and likable remake. One of the better elements of this one is the great reworking of the classic original while still maintaining enough originality to come off like its own entity. The idea of the circus group heading out into the jungle with a rumor about a way to make massive amounts of money off of a rumor deep in the forest works incredibly well to update the original story and head off after it with a small crew of helpers to provide enough hands to accomplish their mission is a fun enough switch as it allows this to fit pretty much the same type of crew responsible here in the same scenario so everything feels handled well in that regard. Likewise, the appearance of the sleazy hunter trying to track the massive snake and getting everything brought to the same storyline beat about him commandeering their boat and dragging them along into his misguided quest to get the snake.

Once it gets through the setup, the fact that there’s a slew of effective, original action scenes and confrontations with the snake that still, surprisingly, follow the same storyline makes for quite an enjoyable overall experience. The first encounter, where he tracks the snake through the jungle, double-crosses his partners to let the snake fall into his trap, and gets stranded on the river because of everything, starts this on a high note where it manages to set the stage for what’s to come. Later encounters, from his failed attempt to haul the snake aboard the boat using the flimsy pulley system rigged to pull the snake him while the bait is secretly a missing member of the group or the final series of sequences in the jungle where the surviving members of the group are forced to battle the snake for themselves, bring about plenty of cheesy action and effects regarding how to stop the creature and the race to get to safety. These all manage to offer up the kind of likable factors to hold it up.

This one has a few big factors here to hold it down. The biggest issue here is that so much of the film does follow along the plot beats of the original that it doesn’t really offer up the kind of surprises that this really needs. The majority of the film follows the same path as the original, where a group of people is sent out into the jungle to take a special trip, which is crashed by a sketchy trapper looking to capture a massive snake in the area and falls prey to the creature as it takes out the group and forces them to fight it off to get away. The content and the action change, but because it’s so close to the source and hits so many of the same points, there are quite a few times where the action of what’s going to happen will be easily guessed to the point of being overly familiar. While it’s nice to get a few changes here involving the group’s origin and how they get there, the fact that they fill the same character archetype role as the original does tends to highlight this even more.

The other issue with the film is the lapse of snake action that occurs around the midway point, taking on more of a jungle-survival arc rather than creature feature action. Once a member of the group is poisoned and turned into a ticking clock for them to get to a rescue point for their survival, the creature tends to disappear, and most of the action instead becomes more concerned with getting the group through the harsh realities of a jungle rainforest. Seeing them traverse thick foliage, scale rugged terrain, and try not to fall into traps left behind by other poachers in the area makes for some fun times, but it does this with the decidedly obvious lack of killer snake action. Even an attempt at fixing this with the trapper turning one of the group into an accomplice doesn’t add much and tends to offer up the kind of formulaic confrontations that don’t add much to the film. On the whole, these end up lowering the film just slightly.

Overview: ***.5/5

A solid enough, if slightly flawed, remake, there’s a lot to like here that it becomes a fun enough time despite a few missteps that occur, which do bring this one down overall. Those with an appreciation for what’s on display, who are general fans of this approach, or who are curious about it will have the most to like, while most others out there should heed caution.