Let’s get this out of the way: Anaconda is not a good movie. But it is a movie. And in an era where pop stars moonlighted as movie stars like it was part of their label contract, this one had Jennifer Lopez leading the crew, Ice Cube packing both a camera and some attitude, and Owen Wilson being… Owen Wilson. If you ever wanted to see J-Lo stare down a 40-foot CGI snake while Jon Voight delivers one of the most baffling accents ever recorded—then boy, are you in for a treat.
Voight’s turn as snake hunter Paul Serone is a masterclass in eyebrow-raising choices. His accent? Somewhere between Paraguayan gangster and half-asleep Dracula. It’s less performance, more fever dream. We can only assume it snuck past studio execs in a similar fashion to how the anaconda sneaks aboard the boat: very loudly and implausibly. It’s the kind of delivery that feels like he’s trying to hypnotise the audience into thinking he knows what he’s doing.
Ice Cube plays Richie, a cameraman who clearly doubles as the group’s emotional support human. Fun fact: he supposedly released his own 10-minute cut of the movie using the ENG camera his character carries around the entire first half. Frankly, we’d like to see that version—it probably has more believable editing.
Speaking of editing, this movie commits several cinematic crimes against continuity. Within ten minutes, Owen Wilson’s character switches from wearing chunky headphones to bare-necked without a trace of explanation. It’s almost like the snake ate them. But nothing, nothing, prepares you for the moment a waterfall flows upwards. Yes. UP. As in, the editor literally just reversed the footage and hoped no one would notice. Spoiler: we noticed.
And yet, somehow Anaconda killed it at the box office. With a modest budget and a cast stacked high with future megastars, it pulled in enough viewers to warrant a sequel, a spin-off, and even spiritual successors that tried—and failed—to recapture its weird charm. Let’s not forget it commits the cardinal sin of killing off Danny Trejo before the opening titles even roll. If you’re going to sacrifice Machete, at least let him punch a snake first.
Despite all its flaws—and there are many—there’s a certain hypnotic watchability here. Maybe it’s the swampy aesthetic, maybe it’s the earnestness of a cast who are clearly trying to act their way out of a creature feature, or maybe it’s the sheer “what-am-I-watching” energy that keeps you hooked like a python around a riverboat.
Anaconda doesn’t reinvent the genre. It doesn’t even follow the basic rules of it. But it does give you Jon Voight getting swallowed and then winking after he’s evacuated from a snake’s stomach. That’s either cinema at its worst—or its peak. We haven’t decided.
Final Verdict: 5/10. A clunky, CG-choked mess of a monster flick, but with enough unintentional comedy and 90s charm to make it worth a late-night hate-watch. Like a reptilian version of The Room, you’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, and then wonder how this made so much money.
