As a wise professor of archaeology once asked, “Why'd it have to be snakes?”
Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, snakes are by far one of the most commonly cited sources of nightmare fuel, even if the average person’s fear is widely disproportionate to the actual danger snakes pose. Most snakes in North America, for example, are harmless, and even venomous species generally want nothing to do with humans and attack only when threatened. But thanks to a mix of deep evolutionary fear, stealthy predatory habits, and many religions painting snakes as the symbol of evil, everybody knows somebody absolutely petrified of snakes.
And horror movies have gleefully exploited that fear for decades.
Early snake horror movies focused mainly on the fear of snake charmers, like 1955’s Cult of the Cobra, or human-snake hybrids, like 1961’s The Snake Woman and 1973’s Sssssss. Snakes were unsettling, sure, but the horror lay in the human kinship shared with the wriggliest of reptiles. But in 1983, William Fruet’s Spasms with Oliver Reed and Peter Fonda hit the world, and we got our first dedicated feature film about a giant serpent escaping captivity and going on a murderous rampage.
Loosely based on the novel Death Bite by Michael Maryk and Brent Monahan, the Canuxploitation classic replaced the usual practice of using wrangled snakes with animatronics by Raymond Mendez and Neal Martz, paired with truly great gore effects designed and realized by legendary SFX makeup artists Dick Smith and Stephan Dupuis.
But everything changed for the snake subgenre of monster movies in 1997 with Luis Llosa’s Anaconda, which spawned a wildly popular film franchise and inspired decades of ripoffs. The original film used two mechanical snakes (25 and 40 feet long, respectively) created by Walt Conti, along with alleged real anacondas for a handful of shots. However, it was the inclusion of CGI for the major attack sequences that would carry over into almost all the films Anaconda’s success inspired.
In the wake of Anaconda, the overwhelming majority of giant snake films relied solely on quick, low-budget CGI for their big bads. While I may be charmed by the sometimes laughably schlocky made-for-TV films like Mega Snake or Jim Jim Wynorski’s Piranhaconda, a practical, tangible snake is the key to instilling genuine scares when it comes to an oversized ophis.
This is what makes Mike P. Nelson’s Beware Boiúna such a refreshing addition to the subgenre, because the grounded creature feature from Lionsgate is a welcome return to the harmonious marriage of practical effects with quality CGI. The Boiúna is a colossal black serpent from Brazilian folklore, revered and respected as the most powerful creature of the rivers within the Amazon rainforest. That respect carries into the creation of Beware Boiúna, delivering a giant snake that looks genuinely threatening on screen but serves as the centerpiece of a very human story.
Nelson used a massive piece of HVAC to yank through the Amazon to replicate the heaviness of a real snake, not to mention, principal photography actually took place in the Amazon rainforest, requiring professional animal wranglers on set to keep the cast and crew safe from real wildlife hazards – like the venomous and poisonous species found in the Amazon. That real location is palpable and instantly heightens the stakes because, as anyone who has watched even a single episode of River Monsters can tell you, there’s some scary stuff out there.
And Beware Boiúna brings plenty of scares through actors being thrown around the rainforest on wires to simulate the trajectory of being whipped around by Boiúna, a gag-inducing replication of a botfly extraction with some incredible SFX makeup in close-up shots, and, of course, the impressive snake realism led by special effects supervisor Felipe De La Roche.
The titular Boiúna is so big, so powerful, and so beautifully crafted that it’s impossible not to squirm in your seat whenever she’s stalking those who dared to wake her. Her design shows unmatched attention to detail, keeping her true to her snake form and avoiding the “devil eyes” anthropomorphizing so many other snake films have done in the past.
And rather than relying solely on the primal fear of snakes that plagues so many people, Beware Boiúna could arguably be described as a compelling horror movie that happens to feature a giant snake, rather than a “giant snake movie.”
To draw audiences in even more, the film stars the Fear Street trilogy’s Kiana Madeira, Happy Death Day's Jessica Rothe, and Upgrade star Logan Marshall-Green, so die-hard horror fans already have a bias that when Boiúna decides who lives or dies, she shows mercy to our faves.
Countless people cite Anaconda as the source of their fear of snakes, and it won’t be surprising if Beware Boiúna does the same. A moment of silence for the next generation of horror fans who will catch this film a little too young and spend the rest of their lives terrified of anything that slithers just a little too slowly in tall grass.
Beware Boiúna is the new face of titanoboa terror, and if you disrespect her, you’re likely to get swallowed whole.
