Clever, this Anaconda, a vastly ironic comedy horror written and directed by the guys who did The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent – which was also as clever as it was ironic.
It follows a bunch of flaky dudes whose lives have been less than fulfilling in a last ditch attempt to do something meaningful by remaking 1997’s corny creature-feature Anaconda on a micro budget. Off they head, wedding videographer Doug (Jack Black) and useless actor Griff (Paul Rudd), with childhood friends Kenny (Steve Zahn) and Claire (Thandiwe Newton) to the Amazon, where the snake wrangler they hire will be as good as useless, and the pilot of their boat will turn out to have stolen it.
What the doltish Kenny has told them is that he, somehow, has the rights to the original movie, having bought them off somebody or other. But this is not true, as becomes clear when Doug and crew bump encounter a Sony production team on the river, who are halfway through making a legit, big-budget remake of the film, complete with Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube as cast members (as they were first time out).
Selton Mello plays snake-handler Carlos and Daniela Melchior plays Ana Almeida, the boat’s pilot – on the run from a bunch of bad guys with a grudge, so she says. Mello and Melchior slot in alongside the more well known cast members. Together they are a lively bunch of talent, funny, silly, throwing themselves into their task and managing the transitions between comedy and horror with great skill.
What we as an audience get is a film that starts out looking like precisely the sort of no-budget goof-off film that Doug, Griff and co are shooting, but which gradually morphs into the one the Sony crew are making. “We came out here to make Anaconda and now we’re in it,” says Doug after one of their party is killed by a giant snake. Eventually everyone ends up on the Sony set, where Ice Cube himself turns up, in little more than a cameo, to utter the film’s funniest line.
En route we get small meditations on how movies are made. The guys realise early on that their film can’t just be about snakes killing people. It has to be “about something”. “Themes,” they shout in unison.
There is no sight of a theme, beyond the meta-ness of the whole thing. No sign either of John Voight and no real need to be afraid, unless snakes really do it for you. Apparently director Tom Gormican and co-writer Kevin Etten originally pitched it as the original Anaconda meets The Big Chill. Yes, maybe, if you tilt your head and squint at it, but really it’s a vehicle for a raft of dumb gags about personally inadequate people being funny while a giant constrictor tries to squeeze them to death.
Apparently also, Black and Rudd had each other’s roles originally – so Black was the failed actor and Rudd was the wedding videographer with grandiose ideas his clients invariably rejected. It makes little difference who plays which, but this way round we get to see Jack Black as a director heading into a jungle to catch a monster on film, which is King Kong vibes all over again.
Zahn, Rudd and Black, scene-stealers all, leave Newton a touch in the shade, but Melchior cuts through perhaps surprisingly well as an update on the sort of ballsy broad Kathleen Turner once used to play.
It is fast, fun and clever, has great pace and even delivers the odd boo-scare here and there. Doing for Rudd and Black – and Newton and Zahn to a lesser extent – what Gormican and Etten did for Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal in Massive Talent, this Anaconda is the high concept movie at its best.
Anaconda – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
