Snake movies were a thing since Anaconda (1997), even though they were not well received by critics and audience alike. Yet somehow this movie marks a time the internet buzz was widespread like forest fires even before its release. Despite this craze, the movie fell short of expectations, just like the movies of this kind before. I have reviewed Anaconda and Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid (2002) and those movies had common flaws that rendered them laughable but nonetheless commercially successful: cardboard characters, factual inaccuracies, boring start, cliches that only children would not notice, and several instances of unintentional humor. If snake thrillers are rife with these hitches, then it is no wonder they fail to impress.
So after a montage of the scenic Hawaiian beaches, which would entice any non-American to visit one day, the movie starts off with a BMX biker, Shawn, who accidentally witnesses a crime at an apartment. Okay the perpetrator Edward Kim is a wacky excuse who is getting back at his victim, a prosecutor named Daniel Hayes. He starts heckling him with this cheesy talk about a boy growing up without a father, before finishing his own banter with himself without a father. Guess this movie has to emphasize the importance of a male role model in a boy's life. I do not see how his bodyguards take this guy seriously as he acts like a spoiled brat!
Shawn gets away, but does it without having waited for the criminals to leave the area completely. He does this stupidly by riding off on his loud bike and thus giving himself away in broad daylight. Does he not realize the trouble he has wound up in by doing this? And he did not have a camera phone to begin with. So they follow him to his home, without actually establishing how they were able to do this given the fact he, although riding a small bike, could have easily outmaneuvered him on road.
Luckily for him, Samuel L. Jackson's character, FBI Agent Neville Flynn, grabs him unexpectedly. Okay, he does this the moment the mobsters dismantle his door lock but not before? And how is it that a cop is allowed to scale a building without being seen by anyone from a radius of at least 200 m? Well Shawn said that he could not report to the police because of corruption in high places. So I think I can let it lie for now.
So the main plot of this movie is that Shawn has to be flown to L.A. to testify against Kim and put him away for life, however Kim's henchmen and insiders are going to ensure that Shawn is killed off to hamper this progress. However, this movie is not without several subplots to introduce several additional characters who will serve some purpose to the story, or will just add more tension or agony to it.
Here are three of several side characters who will be boarding the plane, and one of them is familiar to all those children who grew up with one memorable kid's show on Nickelodeon, Kenan & Kel. Believe me, not every one of them has a bigger impact on this movie than the guy in the middle, and he is so much of a spoof of P. Diddy and Kanye West.
These stewards know how to socialize among themselves, even when you hear dialogue that sounds so bass that it spells "mediocre". I can be sure that these actors are not the type to be big or important. In fact, this is the usual case with movies where scores of deaths are to occur: serve them up on a platter, and don't expect us to feel for them because they are either uninteresting or just stereotypical.
So there is a cargo being loaded into the aircraft which Shawn is boarding. I have seen a shot where a sniffer dog is doing its job yet the only thing that security is dismissing as minor is a cat in a cage. the dog senses danger yet its handler doesn't check further. You know it is as if they have never learned their lesson form 9/11.
What seems more inconvenient here is that first class has been "overbooked", though it has been occupied by one witness for the sake of protection. I find this excuse weak and illogical but considering the security already so lax, why not take this precaution.
You know when we want so see snakes tear the chunks out of unsuspecting victims, we have to endure almost half an hour of human bonding or something. It does bring the boredom to the theater before the tide falls. However, it turns out that even kids are on the plane, so it may well be a good time to consider them as important because they are going to be dragged into the upcoming mayhem that they surely did not see coming.
The biggest letdown in this movie is the C.G.I. snakes. I have already hyped in the past on the quality of the images. Animatronic snakes are far more realistic than the C.G.I. so it is little wonder anyone would be more engaged to the snakes themselves than the carnage they unleash on a plane where they have no way of escaping or hiding from these reptiles.
Okay, you were warned about this. You tamper with the smoke detector and you're breaking the law. This should have alerted the cockpit and the stewards about this criminal damage and thus cause the plane to land for investigation. But the movie has to go along so this is negated. At least the couple get down and dirty so that we see this lady's hot tits, unlike in aforementioned movies.
The two are the first victims of the snake attack. The only thing to savor here is the cheesy CGI snake sucking on her tit while injecting its venom into her. Aside from that, the snake itself is just an eyesore.
The snakes have broken loose and have damaged the electrics on the plane. It is as if they were smart enough to do this knowing what they have just compromised.
This is just an overkill. Another snake bites him on a dick. This is like snake porn or something.
Predator camera vision.
There's a snake between her legs. Get the metaphor-cum-literal gist.
Okay. So I am watching two instances where each snake is inches from its next victim yet there is just an unexpected cause for saving grace, even when a character screams on his PSP. Nevertheless it is cleverly used to illustrate how close for comfort they were.
But that doesn't come for the other passengers when all hell breaks loose! It's the attack of the venomous snakes on a plane! We get it all: shaky camera, flickering lights, passengers scrambling for safety, blood and bone-crunching sound effects. This scene has taken enough time to reach this part. Did I forget to mention that these snakes are just attacking everybody because of the pheromones that one of the insiders sprayed on the flower souvenirs that triggers aggression even when provoked? That's why the snakes are just attacking helpless passengers.
This woman in the center happens to be working her last shift before retirement. It is also a coincidence that she takes the bite in place of a baby she rescues; thus she does not have to suffer the grueling years in retirement. However, if you look at the very shot where she is bitten, it looks as if she was never bitten to begin with. The CGI snake looks as though it was too far from her shoulder to bite her and so the blood should have not leaked.
I remember a scene like this in City Slickers II: the Legend Of Curly's Gold (1994) where a guy named Phil thought a rattlesnake bit him on his buttock. Here, a certain guy in blue was bitten on his own buttock but refuses to have an air steward suck the poison out for the sake of dignity. It's like they watched the movie and couldn't stand the stigma of doing it. It is also a miracle that after all that time after being bitten he still has the strength to walk and talk; with no sign of diminishing consciousness.
Another coincidence. A small boy, named Tommy, has just been bitten by a cobra, but an air stewardess just happens to know a procedure to remove the venom from his arm. This is another victim who just has a tough tissue to hold all that venom and prevent it from seeping into the bloodstream.
Dr. Steven Price is a "hard-core snake specialist". Even for the FBI in this reality, it is a painful resort for a situation like this because it would have otherwise been treated as a coincidence. Happily there was none on a plane, thus dispelling the chance of being further downgraded for random chances of this sort. But I am going to question whether the actor playing the herpetologist truly knows his role very well when he struggles with his lines and pauses almost three time in a row.
Remember when I said that there was going to be someone whom you would not ever give a toss about? This guy takes the biscuit because he mercilessly throws Mercedes' pet chihuahua to the python to keep the python occupied. However, that proves pointless because the python, despite killing the dog, abandons it and goes for the cruel jerk instead. He just got his comeuppance, like any villain in a movie whose despicable tendency was foreseen to be followed by his tragic end. This also highlights how a python prefers human meat to dog meat, despite the obvious size difference. By the way, that python was a latest addition to a plague of snakes, even though it is non-venomous. It's like the director grew weary of the venomous snakes and so went with something different to make this chaotic scene more exciting.
Remember Mr. Spoof here? Let me just assume that this is a typical celebrity who basks in fame but fails to keep his cool in a moment of turbulence. Clarence loses his mind over people coughing on him and diminishing circulation of oxygen. I guess this is how they fall from grace and try all they can to get back on top.
The FBI undertake an investigation into how the snakes were smuggled unto the plane in the first place. Long enough for me to not even note the sequence of events, they eventually find out that someone has collected snakes from around the world, to raise the chance of the poisons not being able to be neutralized with the correct antidotes. (He has been indicted for the crime more than once in the past, yet he somehow has based himself in the same area; making it easy to be tracked down.) However, given the chances of being bitten himself, the smuggler has already stashed his own supply of antidotes just in case, giving the FBI the chance to recover them to heal the passengers on the plane. I can't call this a coincidence because of the logic guiding this scenario.
A desert black snake, native to the Middle East, bites this smuggler and slithers away. Nobody catches and boxes it in case it bites anyone else. The officers interrogate him within seven minutes, so containing the black snake is not a priority.
You know what this movie needs? Another coincidence. The pilot has just died from heavy poisoning and not the plane is nearing the LA airport. Nobody is left to fly the plane except Troy (Kenan Thompson), and he only has rough knowledge of this after spending countless hours on a fight simulator. This guy is glued to his PSP so when it comes to landing the plane, he is the one. So remember, before boarding a plane, play video games for at least 2000 hours. Really? That long. No wonder you and your friend are overweight. This does deliver mixed messages about video games.
"Enough is enough! I have had it, with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!! Everybody strap in. We're about to open some fucking windows." This is the very line by Samuel L. Jackson that has to be the very pinnacle of the movie. The time has come to eject all those unwanted passengers so that they can safely land the plane, even if that plan alone is dangerous.
This is the dangerous plan. Not everyone has strapped in tight into their seats. Yet they were able to hold on for dear life.
This guy Troy has been mute for the entirety of this movie. In fact there are so many characters whose names I could not even grasp in this movie. Give Anaconda credit: at least I could learn the characters name from the beginning, even if their voice was not coherent. Here, the music often plays so loudly that, accompanied with background noise, I could not even hear their names called out until the end. In short, these characters are not someone I would even bond with more readily. That's the problem: you don't know who they are until their names are called and even when their names are called, you can't identify them.
So thanks to Troy's near-miss landing, everyone makes it out alive--even a snake that lunges at Shawn. This is one of cliches where a brief respite must surely be interrupted by a threat that was thought to have been extinguished. Thankfully, Neville shoots it dead, after equipping Shawn with a bulletproof vest. You know, I can finally assume that all these snakes act like sentient beings acting under the order of the criminal Edward Kim. In fact, throughout this film, several snakes had open opportunities to kill their victims but decided to delay or move on. In fact, this follows the same trend as the venom from each snake: some types of venom are less potent than others, giving a select victims a chance to survive.
"Do as you say, and you'll live." This quote has been uttered three time in this film. It is a rosy end to a frightful experience on a plane plagued with snakes. I can say that the genre of snake horror hasn't always been a favorite for many. However, when a Hollywood superstar is brought in for the ride, it can be a case where some aspects of this film can be taken seriously and solidly. It's not overall bad, just cheesy and cliched. Coincidences are the usual case, but the scenery can convince one that this is a movie worth remembering. It has moments which are rife in B-movies, but this one stands as one to be archived in households.
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