Anaconda (2025) Review: Tiresome Metafilm

While the concept for Tom Gormican’s meta-reboot of Anaconda is intriguing, the end result quickly gets tedious and repetitive.

Each setpiece is ridiculously over-the-top and maximalist in the best possible way, while Jon Voight’s floating non-Paraguayan accent as the snake hunter Paul Serone must be heard to be believed.

It’s why the initial premise of Tom Gormican’s 2025 reboot of the Anaconda franchise, in its first theatrical entry since Llosa’s original, sounds somewhat tantalizing. Amateur filmmakers with profound reverence for Sony’s cult classic embark on a journey to remake it their own way and get hunted by a real anaconda in the process. Genius! Perhaps it’s a bit too on the nose, but who doesn’t love a movie that pokes fun at objects of our past in a celebratory way? Upon its release, Llosa’s Anaconda was largely panned by critics, except for Roger Ebert, who qualified the film as “a slick, scary, funny Creature Feature, beautifully photographed and splendidly acted in high adventure style.” It was also nominated for six Razzie awards, including Worst Picture and – yes – worst actor for Voight’s ridiculous accent.

Yet it endured in popular culture, and its public perception quickly shifted from a disastrously conceived natural horror movie to a rowdy good ol’ time you can have at a movie night with the boys. For the 2025 reboot/metafilm, there was an opportunity for Gormican to showcase why, against all odds, the film became so beloved and ingrained within contemporary society. Yet, there’s very little enjoyment in what is a (mostly) painfully unfunny comedy that never takes full advantage of its setting and framing device, despite the on-screen talent it has to make something that’s at least fun to watch. It’s enjoyable on occasion, sure, but the whole meal isn’t as satisfying as one thinks it can be.

Credit where credit is due, Gormican does frequently show reverence for Llosa’s film through the love that best friends Doug (Jack Black) and Griff (Paul Rudd) have for it. However, he possesses little of the self-awareness that makes that movie so entertaining. It’s a meta-comedy in name only, barely scratching the surface of Anaconda’s cult appeal, nor does it seriously poke fun at Sony’s creative bankruptcy, while the audience has to endure tediously repetitive sequences where Black and Rudd yell at the screen as an unimpressively constructed CGI anaconda chases them within the Amazon jungle as they attempt to remake one of their favorite movies.

Together with friends Kenny (Steve Zahn) and Claire (Thandiwe Newton), alongside boat captain Ana (Daniela Melchior) and snake handler Santiago (Selton Mello), Doug and Griff set to do something only their wildest dreams have imagined, but are upended by a real snake that has been stalking them ever since they left the port of Manaus to begin shooting their unofficial (and unauthorized) reboot of Anaconda. Later in the movie, Gormican’s production takes an even bigger meta-dimension that could’ve theoretically worked if he and co-writer Kevin Etten had leaned hard on the ridiculous nature of the film we’re watching. However, it mostly ends up feeling relatively hollow, despite cameos that had the audience at a promotional screening (featuring live snakes to boot, which is kinda awesome) howling in pure disbelief. There will be no spoilers in this review, but these appearances are when this iteration of Anaconda is at its most reverential and hilarious.

One would’ve hoped the entire movie would be as funny as when familiar faces pop up, but most of the jokes either involve alcohol, drugs, or bodily fluids. If you like variations of these three elements, you may have a blast watching Anaconda. If you think comedy should be a little smarter than this (knowing full well that it can – and should – be stupid), you might pull your hair out watching Anaconda. And it’s a real shame, because Black and Rudd’s alchemy is genuinely enthralling, with the former never losing a step in making us laugh through his manic energy, which was also the best part of Jared Hess’ A Minecraft Movie. There’s a sense of play between the two that sadly doesn’t get fully explored, because the movie constantly teeters between purely farcical meta-comedy and a film that needs to develop its character relationships and be slightly self-serious. As a result, it haphazardly inserts a side plot about illegal gold mining that goes absolutely nowhere and quickly sags the comedy.

Worse yet, each sequence with the anaconda isn’t nearly as exhilarating or amusing as Llosa’s movie. The snake is unconvincingly brought to life, while cinematographer Nigel Bluck’s camera continuously focuses on the humans within the environment, never making its titular character feel urgent in our – and the protagonists’ – eyes. The action is also haphazardly edited and never leans into the anaconda’s frightening traits in a way that makes us genuinely fear for the humans’ lives, even though they are all walking, talking joke machines. The movie frequently cuts away from the violence, and any instance of maximalism is hampered by reaction shots in which a character says, “Well…that just happened,” rather than letting the scene speak for itself.

Then, the characters’ motivations begin to shift, some side protagonists are sidelined in favor of mildly funny jokes, and the movie attempts to regain viewers’ interest through the aforementioned cameos, which are enjoyable but further highlight this reboot’s problems rather than improving upon them. It results in a mildly distracting affair, but doesn’t come close to replicating the deranged pleasures offered by Llosa’s 1997 original, which still holds up as one of the craziest big-budget studio productions you can see. If you want an insane, participatory time at the movies, the original is right there, waiting for you to experience something beyond description. Sadly, Gormican never reaches those heights and churns out a mindlessly forgettable entry that won’t stay in pop culture as much as the 1997 film does. 

Anaconda will be released globally in theatres on December 25-26, 2025.