Movie Review: ANACONDA

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: December 25th, 2025 / 01:15 AM

ANACONDA movie poster | ©2025 Sony Pictures

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Steve Zahn, Thandiwe Newton, Daniela Melchior, Selton Mello, John Billingsley
Writers: Tom Gormican & Kevin Etten, based on ANACONDA written by Hans Bauer and Jim Cash & Jack Epps Jr.
Director: Tom Gormican
Distributor: Sony/Columbia
Release Date: December 25, 2025

The reason so many people love bad horror movies is that, when those movies are terrible enough, they can be wondrously hilarious. The problem is, of course, that it’s very hard to parody something that’s already essentially funny. Gilding the lily can kill the plant, as it were.

The new ANACONDA takes place in a world where the 1997 ANACONDA – a gloriously awful and (for its day) big-budget prime example of bad horror – exists as a movie adored by our heroes, struggling actor Ronald Griffin Jr. (Paul Rudd) and his childhood pal Doug McAllister (Jack Black), once an aspiring filmmaker, now a director of wedding videos who has what his boss Jerry (John Billingsley) jovially refers to as a “B-plus” life.

We get a lot of flashbacks to when Griff and Doug were kids, making a Sasquatch movie with their pals Kenny and Claire, played as adults by, respectively, Steve Zahn and Thandiwe Newton.

Fresh off his latest career rejection, Griff announces that he’s secured the remake rights to ANACONDA. He convinces Doug to direct him and Claire in the starring roles, with Kenny as director of photography. A small bank loan and Claire’s savings get them three weeks of a location shoot in the Amazon, plus the services of snake-wrangler Santiago (Selton Mello) and his normal-sized anaconda Heitor.

Our little team of aspiring serpent tale remakers are unaware of a few relevant facts, such as that Ana (Daniela Melchior), captain of their rental boat, is fleeing some determined and well-armed pursuers. And nobody knows yet that there’s a giant anaconda in the river with them.

ANACONDA director Tom Gormican and his co-scripter Kevin Etten are responsible for 2023’s THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT, which starred Nicolas Cage as two versions of himself. The ways in which that could have been, well, unbearable are too many to count, but somehow Gormican, Etten and Cage (with a valuable assist from Pedro Pascal) made it into something that was so knife-edge specific about its targets that it was killer comedy and even had a bit of heart.

But Gormican and Etten are more miss than hit with ANACONDA. Part of it is that they don’t seem to know exactly how to proportion what they’re doing. Do they want to celebrate the contagious, joyous urge to make movies or make fun of how badly these people are doing it? Do they want the ANACONDA we’re watching to feel like a legitimate jungle adventure or should it have some of the over-the-top qualities of its predecessor or should they actively rib the other movie? Much of the film tips into the gulfs between these alternate goals.

There are a few extremely effective meta moments, some amusing ones, and some where the intention is clear, but the jokes fall flat. We get good jump scares, both with the anaconda and with humans, and Gormican stages the big action well.

Black applies his customary expertise to Doug’s bombastic but brotherly personality. Rudd throws himself into Griff’s wistfulness and mania. Zahn fully inhabits Kenny’s zonked-out good cheer. Given that she’s played characters far more frightening than any super-sized reptile, it’s fun to see Newton dive into Claire’s wide-eyed pluck under pressure. Melchior is an admirable badass and Mello has solid comedic timing.

Unlike its inspiration, this ANACONDA isn’t so bad that it’s good. Indeed, it’s not actually bad at all, but it’s mostly only okay.

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