It’s an interesting time for a movie about a large snake. The keystone of the subgenre is 1997’s J-Lo-starring classic Anaconda, which received an official sequel last year in the form of a meta-comedy. It’s not difficult to hit success in the animal attack film. The recent successes of 2019’s Crawl, 2016’s The Shallows, or 2025’s Primate showcase the possibilities, but it’s proven difficult to land a solid snake movie (no, not the video game protagonist) that proceeds with serious intent. Never fear, fans of massive slithering fiends, Beware Boiúna is here with a back-to-basics but thoroughly enjoyable tale.
Deep in the Amazon jungle, a humanitarian medical mission coasts along the Curuçá River. It’s an expedition led by Miguel (Juan Pablo Shuk), bringing doctors-in-training Alli (Jessica Rothe) and Callum (Will Close) to various villages down the river. They treat medical conditions and refuel along the way, their crew completed by engineer Lena (Kiana Madeira) and her boat captain father. On a night out drinking, they run into a group of colonizers led by Brennan Malloy (Logan Marshall-Green), who ramps up Alli’s ire. A drunken encounter with Brennan’s brother later causes his death, resulting in the colonizers’ ship chasing the doctors into the snake deity’s terrain. Bad idea.
Excellent Performances Ground A Realistic Monster Movie
Jessica Rothe is excellent as the empathetic but fish-out-of-water Alli. Rothe plays her with a heart-on-her-sleeve vulnerability alongside just enough gumption to get her into trouble. It makes for a great driver of drama and a fantastic surrogate for the audience. Logan Marshall-Green is solid as the colonizing elder brother. Visibly over his younger brother’s shenanigans, he loses his level-headed nature after the latter’s death. Marshall-Green becomes truly threatening in response, then proceeds through a whole character arc after the discovery of the mythic snake kaiju. His performance allows a nuanced arc as the narrative slithers along, without losing sight of the potential villainy still resting inside him.
The film manages to be exciting, but there are clear ways to turn it from a solid monster movie into an all-time great creature feature.
It’s Kiana Madeira, however, who’s the film’s secret weapon. Lena was effectively raised by a local tribe, following a deadly childhood encounter with Western colonizers. She and her brother grew up trying to halt the colonizers’ excursions into the local territory, accumulating a bunch of badass skills in tow. With a mixture of vulnerability, intensity, and believable capability in combat and practical problem-solving, Kiana grounds a number of the film’s coolest scenes, and she and Rothe play well together. There’s an interesting camaraderie between them that both performers land well.
The Creature Action Is Great, But We Need More
Beware Boiúna boasts an overall strong script that puts believable characters in frightening situations. It does a good job building suspense from multiple sources, first with the lore-centric introductions to the titular massive snake, and then with the colonizer crew moving from a passive to an active threat. There are layers of conflicting villainy, which makes for an engaging, multifaceted ride, while the protagonists also change and grow as their situation evolves. The massive snake itself is well-designed and menacingly large, and there’s at least one sequence with a joyful amount of payoff that hearkens subtly to classic monster movie confrontations.
The biggest issue with the film is how little monster action audiences actually get. The titular serpent is fantastic and well designed, and the film capably maintains suspense throughout. On the other hand, we see mere glimpses of Boiúna for much of the film’s runtime. There are ample shots of her effects, the devastation she’s wrought in the jungles, and we also see characters’ terror at seeing her or knowing she’s around. She frighteningly strikes with the speed of a much smaller snake, which is used to great effect. All these techniques, however, rely on seeing her in action for brief moments of time. It would be nice to see her massive size in action, and allow the audience to feel awe at her scale and power. There’s a moment, for example, the characters realize they’re surrounded by her. We get quick pans, but there are numerous ways to film that which would allow us to have proper awe for a creature that large.
Altogether, Beware Boiúna is a suspenseful creature feature that centers talented performers and dials up suspense and gravitas well. Rothe, Madeira, and Marshall-Green turn in exceptional performances that add to its realism, and the monstrous snake works well when we can see it. It’s a fun feature, but there are also some pitfalls. A few more direct experiences of the titular creature’s power and scale would both be fun and add to the awe and terror of the situation. We rarely see the huge creature at its center, and there really isn’t a good reason for it… Certain scenes go out of their way to avoid that obvious angle. The film manages to still be exciting, but there are clear ways to turn it from a solid monster movie into an all-time great creature feature.
Beware Boiúna strikes theaters October 2, 2026.
For more Reviews, make sure to check back to That Hollywood Show.
Reviews