Anacondas: Hunt for the Blood Orchid
| Year: | 2004 |
| Director: | Dwight Little |
| Cast: | Johnny Messner, Morris Chestnut, KaDee Strickland |
If you're like most moviegoers, the first question you asked yourself when you heard they were making a sequel to the 1997 shocker was 'why'?
It might surprise you to learn that although being one of them most panned films of the late 1990's and a permanent blight on the careers of Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight and Ice Cube, Anaconda was a huge hit for Columbia.
When they commissioned a sequel, it was more than likely meant to die a quick death in cinemas and then find a cult audience on DVD among Plan 9 From Outer Space fans. The reason it's made it to cinemas is probably because it's actually (despite being a B movie schlock horror), better quality than you think it'll be.
This time, the anacondas are bigger, badder, meaner, and carry themselves with the speed and ease of garden skinks instead of 40 foot, 500 kilogram snakes.
Once again, we're dealing with a team of disparate personalities travelling upriver (this time in search of a rare orchid with pharmaceutical applications), hunted down one by one by the impossibly hungry monsters.
Plot holes? Inconsistencies? Bad science (such as snakes in Borneo that are native to South America eating a boatload of people when in reality they sleep for three days after a single meal)? Step right up!
The scares are corny, the dialogue is hammy and the CG snakes are badly animated. But here's the rub; everyone involved knows it, and despite playing it almost straight, the movie works as a horror (in the comic vein) as a result.
It might surprise you to learn that although being one of them most panned films of the late 1990's and a permanent blight on the careers of Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight and Ice Cube, Anaconda was a huge hit for Columbia.
When they commissioned a sequel, it was more than likely meant to die a quick death in cinemas and then find a cult audience on DVD among Plan 9 From Outer Space fans. The reason it's made it to cinemas is probably because it's actually (despite being a B movie schlock horror), better quality than you think it'll be.
This time, the anacondas are bigger, badder, meaner, and carry themselves with the speed and ease of garden skinks instead of 40 foot, 500 kilogram snakes.
Once again, we're dealing with a team of disparate personalities travelling upriver (this time in search of a rare orchid with pharmaceutical applications), hunted down one by one by the impossibly hungry monsters.
Plot holes? Inconsistencies? Bad science (such as snakes in Borneo that are native to South America eating a boatload of people when in reality they sleep for three days after a single meal)? Step right up!
The scares are corny, the dialogue is hammy and the CG snakes are badly animated. But here's the rub; everyone involved knows it, and despite playing it almost straight, the movie works as a horror (in the comic vein) as a result.