Beware Boiúna

josh5.0

bat shit crazy

Matt!4.0

Jessica Rothe. Logan Marshall-Green. Kiana Madeira. A gigantic fuckin snake.This movie was made in a lab specifically for me.Fantastic Fest 2026

SeanChandler3.5

I didn't realize I was going to have multiple VERY cool experiences with this film, but I did.First, I saw it at its world premiere at Fantastic Fest, where I worked the red carpet and interviewed the two leads and director Mike P. Nelson (who did last year's Silent Night, Deadly Night). There was a gigantic snake head on display, and they brought a big old snake that they wrapped around my head before the movie started.This is an original creature feature about a gigantic snake, based on Amazonian folklore as well as real creatures that once roamed the Earth. And it's a lot more unpredictable than I was expecting. Generally speaking, with these movies, you know where it's headed, which characters are going to make it till late, and what the dynamics are going to be. Not here. In the first half, I was thinking there were a few more layers to this than I expected. Allie is this optimistic, bright, sunlight kind of character who's really just trying to do good and make a difference in the world, and her good intentions get her in over her head. Then right around the midpoint, when things really get going, I had no idea where it was headed. It goes in completely unpredictable directions, and the character dynamics shift in ways I wasn't expecting.It also takes the horror seriously. At a time when so many movies lean heavily on comedy, this one just goes for it: this is horrifying. It's mean. It's brutal. At times you think, oh, we're out of the tension. No, you're not. And things get wild again. Nelson said he was inspired by Sorcerer, bringing that realism to a genre that a lot of times leans into the silly. Let's make horrifying things horrifying.They actually shot on location in the Amazon, so you're seeing people in real environments covered in sweat, bugs, and dirt. It feels grimy. (The cast told me about a poisonous dart frog dropping onto an empty cast chair one day. Thankfully, no one was sitting in it.) For a movie that I assume didn't have a particularly high budget, it looks really good, both the cinematography and the visual effects. A lot of that is because it's set at nighttime in real locations, so they're able to blend the snake into reality and keep it grounded while you watch it attack and destroy people.It's not the next big creature feature that breaks new ground, but it's a solid one that takes itself seriously, with some nice influences from some of my favorite movies.And I enjoyed it enough to watch it a second time... floating in a lake with my wife while scuba divers grabbed our feet during the scary scenes. That works really well for this kind of movie. We normally watch shark movies floating in the lake. There aren't sharks in the lake, but there are snakes, so it makes for an extra visceral experience.