I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the absurdist environmental dramedy “Digger,” the suburban gothic “Verity,” the giant snake flick “Beware Boiúna” and the psychological thriller “Heel.”Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: Set deep in the Amazon rainforest along the Curuçá River, the survival horror film “Beware Boiúna,” now playing in theatres, a colossal, vicious serpent known as the Mother of the Waters attempts to reclaim her territory. “She decides who lives. She decides who dies.”CAST: Kiana Madeira, Jessica Rothe, Logan Marshall-Green. Directed by Mike P. Nelson.
REVIEW: A mix of Amazonian folklore and giant snake movies like “Anaconda” and “Python,” “Beware Boiúna” sets nature against man in a movie that’ll make you root for the territorial snake.
The story begins with a medical team, including doctor Alli (Jessica Rothe) and mechanic Lena (Kiana Madeira), on a six-week humanitarian mission on the Amazon River to deliver aid.
Their presence, coupled with the disruptive surveyors led by Brennan (Logan Marshall-Green), upsets the natural balance of the rainforest, they awaken a behemoth named Boiúna, a giant serpent known as the Mother of the Waters. “When there is balance, she rests,” says Lena. “Imbalance, she defends.”
Boiúna spends much of the film’s overlong 104 minutes slithering in the background, seen only in quick glimpses amid the murky cinematography and jungle foliage.
In a riff on “Jaws,” director Mike P. Nelson keeps the creature mostly out of sight, à la Spielberg in “Jaws,” to allow the viewer’s imaginations to do the heavy lifting. What you can’t see should be more terrifying than Nelson can show you. But with this boatload of uninteresting characters, who lose whatever motivations and traits they may have started with on page one of the script once the snake starts to feed, all you’re left with is a big bad you barely get a look at and human snake food running through the jungle.
“Jaws” was effective because while the shark’s relentlessness was scary, you cared about the characters.
The colonizing bad guys are straight out of Central Casting’s Evil Invader Department, while the humanitarians seem to leave chaos in their wake. That they behave erratically doesn’t matter, because once Boiúna shows up all characterization and logic goes out the window. The characters have names, but they may as well be known as Snake Snack # 1 through #10 given the impact they leave behind.
It adds up to a giant snake movie without the camp appeal of “Anaconda” or the scares of a creature feature like “Jaws.”
