With a pedigree that includes Snakes on a Plane, Snakes on a Train, and the 1997 Jennifer Lopez-Ice Cube vehicle Anaconda (and its quickly forgotten 2025 reboot), it’s safe to say that giant-snake movies are not the most highbrow of horror subgenres. To be clear, Beware Boiúna doesn’t buck this trend: Although the title character is evoked in terms of “defending” the jungle and “restoring balance” between humanity and nature, her inability to tell the good characters from the bad ones effectively negates any themes the movie might be reaching for in this department. (Unless the message is that all humans must be eliminated if Earth is to survive, which would be pretty badass.) In this case, the giant snake is just a giant snake — which is for the best, actually, because then we can relax and just enjoy the mayhem.
An American director like Mike P. Nelson (Wrong Turn, Silent Night Deadly Night) making a survival horror movie set in the Amazon has the potential to be a cultural minefield as well. Nelson manages to sidestep this, largely through a twist in the second act that we won’t spoil here, but takes the movie in a fun new direction leading up to the creature-feature finale. In the meantime, Nelson and screenwriter Alan B. McElroy (Wrong Turn, Halloween 4: the Return of Michael Myers) introduce a cast of characters reminiscent of the scientific exposition team in another jungle classic, Creature from the Black Lagoon.
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