MEGABOA (2021)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

Though in most respects MEGABOA is just the Asylum's very belated take on 1997's ANACONDA, the script throws in just enough biological factoids to justify a fair mythicity-rating. And in comparison with most "colossal critter" flicks, director Mario N Bonassin keeps up a fair amount of physical tension, even though none of the characters are any better than the "monster meat" in a dozen other giant snake movies.

Doctor Larson (Eric Roberts) takes a handful of college students into a South American rainforest to study cave paintings, though they expect to be picked up the next day by a helicopter. The expedition gets an unexpected visitor, a hunter named Joaquin (Joe Herrera), who joins them for shelter, though he acts a little suspiciously at times. Through no one's fault, Larson is bitten by a poisonous spider, and he needs to be evacuated to civilization. But a storm has arisen, making it impossible for rescue forces to visit the area. 

Joaquin comes up with a way to anneal the poison in Larson's system, by leading most of the students in a quest to find a particular rare orchid with antihistamine properties. But it just so happens that the orchid is located in a part of the jungle inhabited by numerous boa constrictors, one of which is big enough to swallow a rhinoceros. If you've seen ANACONDA, you will suspect that Joaquin is the "Jon Voight character" seen in that film, someone who's got an agenda.

Well, he does, and his agenda does cost many of the disposable students' lives. But he's not a fiend like the villain from ANACONDA, just a guy with an Ahab obsession about killing the giant snake. He does try to protect the young people when he can, and he doesn't lie about the necessity of the orchid to save Larson's life.

Speaking of Larson, his wound keeps lead actor Eric Roberts from doing very much, aside from giving the giant snake the name of "Megaboa." He does participate in the final face-down with Megaboa, and a handful of the original expedition are allowed to escape after slaying the gigantic serpent. 

The younger actors acquit themselves reasonably well with their one-dimensional characters, and that alone is doing pretty well for an Asylum movie. It's nothing special, but it was at least watchable, which is more than I was able to say for Jim Wynorski's utterly wretched KOMODO films.