Anacondas: Hunt For The Blood Orchid Review by Bobby LePire. Edited by Courtney McAllister.

 

Welcome back to ‘Creature Feature Month’ at Terribly Fun Films! Last week we looked at the surprise hit “Anaconda”, which was dumber than moss on a rock, but also pretty fun. This installment was co-written by the amazing Ed Neumeier, of “Robocop” and “Starship Troopers” fame, and directed by Dwight Little (“Bloodstone”), who makes his second, and hopefully not last, appearance on “Terribly Fun Films”. So, how does this first sequel, “Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid”, stack against the enjoyable original?

 

When this movie first came out I hated it! Hated it!  I was working at a movie theater at the time, where my friends/ co-workers  and I saw it together. We were amused, but none of us actually liked it. Upon rewatching it for this review, I was pleased to find it’s a better film than the original Still dumb, but it has a bigger scope, and an excellent sense of adventure; both of which make it more enjoyable and entertaining.

 

In contrast to the first film’s failed attempts at style during its opening titles, the sequence here is pretty solid. Flyby scenery shots, so nothing new there, but overlaid with electronic cartography maps, with crosshairs zooming in on important locations of the film- the waterfall, the nest, the tribes’ village- that kind of stuff. It might not sound like much, but it gives the film a heightened sense of scale right off the bat that the first film never managed to achieve. They also establish an excellent geography of the area, so things never get too confusing about where our heroes are, in relation to the field of the titular flower they are hunting.

 

The unnecessary prologue, to establish the deadliness of the anacondas, does offer a cool shot or two. A tribesman is hunting, but then winds up being hunted by a tiger. The tiger is real for a good portion of this, but when startled by the anaconda, it jumps over the head of the tribesman. The slo-mo CGI used to make the tiger jump is so shoddy, that the CGI in the seven years older predecessor looks better. The tribesman starts running, and the massive snake quickly follows. In what is the coolest shot in the entire film, the anaconda uncoils its lower half from a tree and rolls up the running person- the camera follows the man’s POV as he’s flipped outside and yoyoing for a moment, which allows him to grab a weapon and stab the anaconda. It lets him go and he dives off a cliff, believing he’s safe. Upon discovering he’s not, he grabs a low branch to get out quickly, and thanks to convenient thrill anteing, the branch breaks. Snake catches its prey.

 

That’s a long paragraph about a silly, and ultimately pointless, prologue. However, it is indicative of all the issues that plague the movie. Sleek shots, exciting action, questionable effects, and some really big conveniences that are hard to swallow.

 

The story is not a continuation of the first film at all; instead, those original characters are simply referenced, and it’s implied Ice Cube’s character is a cousin to Eugene Byrd. This annoys me, as making it fit more directly is quite easily done. It just seems lazy not to- have the action return to the Amazon (different region though), have the tribe be the same one, and thus, the ceremonial pits and what have you that are in this movie, could have helped flesh out the world of the first film as well. Nonetheless, what we do have here is dumb- oh so dumb- fun.

 

The plot of the film is a modern day quest for the fountain of youth. I did not make that up! The blood orchid only blooms for six months, once every seven years. A big pharmaceutical company wants it, because it contains some blah blah blah DNA blah blah blah that could seriously slow, maybe even stop, the aging process. Look, the “science” throughout this film is plot hole riddled, moronic, and easily crumbles under the slightest of scrutiny. Luckily, the reason for the expedition isn’t as important as the expedition itself. To the beautiful island of Borneo, the company sent:

• Dr. Jack Byron (Matthew Marsden), head researcher and has been obsessed with the flower for years.

• Sam Rogers (KaDee Strickland), research assistant and protege of Jack’s.

• Dr. Ben Douglas (Nicholas Gonzalez), snake fodder (I remember nothing else about him, other than he’s the first to die)

• Gail Stern (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), some sort of executive for the corporation; her specific job eludes me.

• Gordon Mitchell (freaking Morris Chestnut!), a company player trying to prove his worth.

• Cole Burris (Eugene Byrd), errand boy.

They hire:

• Bill Johnson (Johnny Messner), tough, loner boat captain.

• Kong, the greatest pet monkey in any film ever!

• Tran (Karl Yune), co-pilot of the boat.

 

Matthew Marsden portrays his descent into madness fairly well, vacillating between smarmy/ charming, smart, and creepy believably and effectively. Messner is equally good as the captain. With a smug Han Solo vibe going on, and the intensity to pull it off without going over the top, he brings a genuine world weariness to the proceedings. Again, that aids the overall sense of adventure. Richardson-Whitfield is excellent, and her arc to survivor is conveyed quite naturally.

 

Morris Chestnut is good and authoritative as a corporate stooge, but he’s not asked to do much. Karl Yune has some fun moments in the beginning and probably the best one liners, which he says with the perfect amount of sarcasm. Byrd is funny as hell, selling the broad humor the script gives him well. And the monkey that portrays Kong is very well trained and cute; seriously, I love this monkey.

 

All that brings me to KaDee Strickland! I am not positive if her accent and scenery chewing were meant as an homage to Jon Voight in the first film, but that wouldn’t surprise in the least. It’s a very similar acting job, with her undoubtedly fake and purely ridiculous, accent landing somewhere between Texan simpleton and debutante ball aristocrat. With emphasis on odd syllables whenever she speaks, the movie is worth watching just for the immense amusement of her talking. Strickland isn’t just a one trick pony though. She eats all the scenery in her general vicinity, going from whispering to big, loud declarations at the drop of a hat.

 

The dialogue is fairly dumb, but in a laugh out loud kind of way:

• “I like science, I just like money more.”

• “Ben? Ben? Ben?” being asked repeatedly by each character, despite them all witnessing him getting pulled underneath the water. As scientists and a boat captain, you’d think they would know that people can’t speak underwater. What dumbasses.

• “If we find that flower, we find that raft”, is meant to be a sort of rallying cry to get the survivors to keep moving forward with hope. Putting emphasis on such an inane, even in context, sentence is a misguided and boneheaded move. They are discussing a flower and a dinghy that they could remake, because you know, they are in the jungle… surrounded by freaking wood!

 

While the tiger CGI in the prologue was quite shabby, the snakes look fairly good. Some animatronics are used, but not as heavily as in the first film, and they look fine. The best animatronic in the film is an alligator (a crocodile?), which almost kills two of our main characters. Splashing in and out of the water, the animatronic is shown in a variety of angles and shots, and it never looks too fake. The CGI has weight, and when the snakes move through water or shake a tree, etc., the environment reacts and settings move in a realistic way. The snakes don’t seem to have as much detail on them as previously, but so much of the action is quick cut or off screen it’s not a big deal. The model used when the boat goes over a waterfall looks super fake, like a store bought toy.

 

The gator action scene, as most of the action beats until the finale, is quickly edited and only implies the gorier aspects. However, this does mean the film can’t really rest on its laurels, and needs to make sure there’s always mounting tension/ dread, and things don’t go too long until some, even tiny, action happens. There’s a chase sequence with Kong and the anaconda, which is amazing. It is night, and the little monkey is picking fruit for dinner from a tree, when some other animals start running away. The monkey catches on and mad dashes under a log. The snake is close enough to taste Kong’s tail though, and the way the camera cuts to wide angle panning shots, the snake’s POV, and Kong’s frantic running builds up the action very well. The ending of the chase shouldn’t surprise anyone, as it is a monkey vs. a giant snake!

 

The finale involves a sort of ceremonial pit, created for the anacondas, which is surrounding the field of blood orchids. Within the story, these anacondas are the largest ever seen, as they’ve been ingesting the flower, and that has allowed them to stay alive longer than normal (please see dumb movie “science” above). We see a lot of the snakes here, and they look good. Each has some subtle design work on their scales so they don’t all look identical. And no worries, some snakes do catch fire, because this series is all about terrible, geographically uncertain accents and flaming snakes! However, as cool and crazy as the final action gets, it’s not the best instance.

 

As hilariously bad/ secretly brilliant as Strickland is, she gets the coolest damned action scene in the entire franchise. After being shipwrecked and abandoned by the now evil Marsden, our surviving heroes get lost in a series of caves. They eventually regroup and discover an exit. But an anaconda is hot on the heels of Eugene Byrd’s character. The others pull him out and when the snake strikes its head out of the cave opening, Strickland decapitates it! One big, epic, sweeping shot- the most violent in the movie- and it is awesome! Little shot the cave sequence in extreme close up, making it all that much more unsettling and confusing, nicely mirroring our protagonists’ state of mind. So to have a wide shot, held for that long, to showcase the epic killing is not only a change from the last few setups, it also marks a renewed sense of survival in the heroes.

 

Dwight Little does have an amazing sense of scope, as discussed previously. His camera shots tend to not get that close, unless it’s imperative (see above paragraph), which gives the film a huge scope. Lots of wide shots are used to make the characters seem swallowed/ enveloped by their foreboding surroundings. Plenty of crane usage to sweep up and down and through the lush jungle setting, which has the added bonus of giving the impression that the characters aren’t alone, and are being watched. However, it’s not all delicious eye candy. There’s a weird, ominous close up of a survival kit from a (different) wrecked boat, that implies something unsavory about it, when that is not the case. The kit gets lost for a short time, but is found, so the long held shot of it is too heavy handed to make sure we see it, and fails. Then the editing at times is too quick. In order to keep the PG-13 rating, some action moments had to be excised, so I am not sure if it’s really his fault, or if that was the best way to keep the action beats and get their rating. Either way, especially in some of the night attacks, it’s too frantic to really follow everything that happened until the aftermath is revealed. While not a problem all the time, it does make for some off looking scenes, like after Ben is first dragged underwater by the snake, the snake brings him back up and flings him from side to side like a ragdoll because… snakes are dicks? The moment looks odd, because it’s unclear as to why Ben was brought back up to the surface of the water- too much flailing I presume- and the flinging might be the snake’s attempts at getting him in a good position to coil itself around him. But the way it’s edited is more hilariously confusing than anything else.

Fountain of youth pseudo-science? Check! Dumb characters? Check. Fun action? Check! With a larger scope, a better sense of adventure, a goofier plot, but retaining the elements of the first film that truly worked, I think this sequel is the better movie.