‘Beware Boiúna’: Judgment is Coming, and She’s Slippery [REVIEW]

In a place as vast as the Amazon, it makes sense that a giant snake would be the ultimate predator. Feasibly, a giant snake could dwell in the waters of the Amazon River; after all, with how many new species are still being discovered each year it really would not be too far-fetched. Beware Boiúna is a film that doesn’t so much take inspiration from Anaconda as it is a film that sets a creature in between moral and political conflicts.

The film follows a group of medical missionaries who travel along the Amazon from village to village to provide aid. Alli (Jessica Rothe) and Lena (Kiana Madeira) could not be more different. Alli, an American, is empathetic, the exact kind of person one would expect to be a medical missionary. Lena, a local who recently returned, hides behind a gruff exterior as she searches for her missing brother.

While visiting a village, Alli witnesses and barely survives a caiman attack. Shaken from the experience and the unexpected loss of a villager, she and the rest of the team spend time drinking in town, where Alli learns about the myth of Boiúna, a giant snake that protects the Amazon. There an altercation with a group of shady foresters leaves one dead and another, Brennan (Logan Marshall-Green), trailing them through the Amazon for revenge.

Like a protective mother, Boiúna strikes

Violence, however, is exactly the kind of thing that summons Boiúna, who, as one character says, chooses who lives and who dies. But rather than spending the rest of the film only following a creature rampage, Nelson utilizes the time to make the chase more about Alli’s impulsive, emotion-driven choices. It’s a smart move, just like withholding a full appearance of Boiúna.

Even though she is not immediately seen, the destruction left in her wake is. This is something that the group discovers when they encounter a damaged dock while looking for a place to get supplies. And while her structural damage is catastrophic, that is nothing compared to what she is capable of to the human body. It takes a moment to reach the gristly part of the story, but it’s worth it when you remember that snakes like Boiúna constrict their victims in order to kill them before eating them. It’s impressive that Nelson manages to get across just how disgustingly horrifying that would be.

The glimpses of this great protector alongside aerial shots of the dense forest remind the viewer of just how isolated these characters are. No help is coming, and they’re running from something much bigger that knows the forests well. They must quickly learn that they need to think logically if they want to make it out alive.

There is nothing cheesy about Beware Boiúna, and it makes that abundantly clear. The strength in its storytelling involves the emotional core of Alli, Lena, and Brennan and how their separate journeys converge. Rothe and Madeira have off-the-wall chemistry, to the point where it feels like the film should have been marketed towards their relationship.

As the film progresses, though, it loses a little bit of that momentum, stuck someplace between wanting to keep taking itself seriously and taking itself too seriously. Brennan is also not a wholly compelling character, though Marshall-Green still does a damn good job at trying.

Finally, a giant snake that is scary

Still, Beware Boiúna is genuinely scary. Not just in her design, which is striking — no pun intended — but in her presence. Building the tension is a crucial part of making horror movies effective, and too often creature features jump right in and give audiences everything. This film does not fall victim to that. The bits it peppers in until that reveal do more than enough to keep viewers curious, squinting at their screens in hopes that they can catch more than just Boiúna scaly sides.

It’s a bloody, heart-pounding affair. The Amazon is a dangerous yet beautiful thing, and so is Boiúna. It would be easy to despise her, but the film frames her in a way that could almost be seen as sympathetic. She’s simply protecting her land, and it’s difficult to begrudge her that.

Props to Nelson for giving audiences a film that may actually have people saying that there wasn’t enough giant snake.