My Thoughts on “Beware Boiúna”

 

(This is the poster for Beware Boiúna.) 

 

 

Well I have been wanting watch Anaconda (1997) since last year, and still haven't gotten the chance to, so I guess this will have to do. I just got back from seeing Beware Boiúna, the giant killer snake movie 🐍 from director Mike P. Nelson, in theaters today, or yesterday, or a couple of days, or earlier this week depending on when I actually finish this review and when I actually post it on my blog. I actually supposed to start work on my We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️ review since I watched that movie the night before seeing this one. That was supposed to be my first review for October, but it's looking as if this will be. But rest assured I have seen that movie, and I will write a review of it after I finish writing a review of this movie. 

 

I wasn't actually planning on seeing this movie today (Monday October 5, 2026), it was just something kind of impromptu that we did today by suggestion of my aunt. She suggested that me and my grandma go see a movie today to get our minds off of what just happened recently since my dad's in jail again. He didn't relapse on hard drugs or anything, although he may or may not have drunken a beer, he's in jail for trespassing and disorderly conduct. He's going to be in jail nearly all week until Thursday when his next court date will take place. Don't feel too bad for him, the jail up at Acoma is pretty much like a hotel. The inmates get all the amenities you can imagine. They can even watch TV for crying out loud. It's a pretty lax jail to be in, a very cushy jail. Which isn't too surprising. We don't get a lot of crime here up at Acoma, and what crime we do get is usually petty crime, or stuff like trespassing or disorderly conduct. So there's no need for a maximum security prison where we live. Any serious crime like murder that takes place here is usually handled by state police, or federal law enforcement like the FBI, depending on the severity. And if someone around here does commit serious crime around here like say, murder, they usually get transferred to a harsher jail or prison.

 

The only thing we're really worried about with my dad (or at least my aunt and my grandma are worried) is that he'll get transferred to Bernalillo County because of an apparent outstanding warrant for his arrest dating back to the 1990s. But we won't find out what will happen to him for sure until Thursday October 8, 2026, which depending on how long this takes me to write, be might today. So yeah, my dad's jail again, for doing something stupid, for seemingly being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That guy ♂︎ just can't stay out of trouble. He's only person in my immediate family who's been to jail multiple times. I know growing up, there were just long periods of time during my childhood where my dad was in jail, while I was either living with my mom (who's got her own problems now due to alcoholism and her seeming inability to hold down a job and always being broke) or my grandparents. 

 

If he wasn't in jail, he was in rehab, and every time, he would get out, my grandparents (his parents) would take him in since he didn't have a home of his own to go back. He had to come live with his parents. But that wouldn't last long either, and he would screw up and get into trouble again, and get arrested and sent to jail again 🙄. Usually because of his alcoholism or drug addiction. It's just a pattern with him that we've all gotten used to. Only this time it seems it wasn't because of his drug addiction or being intoxicated in any way, it's just he made a stupid decision, went to person's house that he shouldn't have, at a time he shouldn't have, and he got arrested for it. Now he's potentially facing the risk of being sent to a different over a warrant from 30 something years ago. 

 

We all wish he wasn't like this, we all wish he'd make better choices and stop hanging out with the wrong crowd, but that's just the way he is. We can't control it, and we can't control him. It is what it is. It's his life, his choices, and he has to deal with them. All we can do is try to continue living our lives the best we can with or without him. I'm not gonna spend my time worrying about him, being stressed out or feeling anxious over him. I've got better things to do. So does my grandma, and I really hope she doesn't stress out about him either, or make his problems her problems. Because she will do that. Every time my dad gets into trouble like this, she always tries to find some way to get him out, whether it's bailing him out, or helping him out with his court. But, she doesn't need to do that anymore. 

 

My aunt already told her this, he's a grown adult. He's in his 50s now, and in a few years, he'll be in his 60s. He's an old man ♂︎ now and he's only going to get older from here, and yet he still acts like a teenager. Or like a 20 something year old. He acts way younger than he actually is. Which could be virtue, you know, never losing your youthful spirit, never losing your inner child, but in this case, it's not. It's a negative. My dad's a pretty immature person, as well as a very impatient person. Both me and my grandma have way more patience than him. How is that even possible? For the son to have more patience than his dad? It should be the other way around, but it's not. That's just how it is with us. The point is, he's a middle aged man ♂︎, he doesn't need to be babied anymore, despite his immaturity, and my grandma doesn't need to continue holding his hand, and helping through his problems. Problems he brought onto himself by being dumb. My dad's a dumb smart person. If you had any doubt that those kinds of people existed, my dad's living proof. Just because she's his mom and he's her son. 

 

My grandma's in her 70s now, she doesn't need that kind of stress in her life. I don't want her to have stroke, or a mini stroke, her sister (one of my other grandmas) already had one because of the stress her grandkids put her under by being demanding and being hopelessly dependent on her and refusing to take responsibility for anything they do, and actually be independent and do things on their own like grown adults. Because some of them are grown adults like me, a few of them are even older than me, in their 30s going on 40s. I want my grandma to be in good health so she can live as long as possible, and being stressed out over my dad or getting mad at my dad when he screws up and gets into trouble is not going to help with that. 

 

So, in order to get our minds off what's going on with my dad, my aunt suggested that we both go to a movie, and we did. We had to drop off another of my grandmas at her house in Albuquerque since she didn't have a ride home, and my main grandma promised her that she'd give her a ride. You see, today we were supposed to take my dad to his appointment at one of the UNM hospitals (the one that deals with orthopedics and sport's injuries) for his injured leg from when he got run over a few years ago now. I believe it was either 2023 or 2024 when he got run over. That's why he filed that lawsuit and we got that settlement money 💵 because he got run over by car, or a truck, or SUV, or some other kind of vehicle, and he sued the person and got a huge payday out of it 🤑. And it's that settlement money 💵 that we've been living off of for most of the year since April. But since my dad's in jail, and possibly won't be let out until Thursday this week, we couldn't actually take him to his appointment. So my grandma had to cancel it, but we still had to go Albuquerque anyway to drop off my other grandma at her house, and my aunt that we see a movie after that was taken care of. 

 

So we did. We decided to see different movies this time because there really wasn't a single movie that we could agree on and we could see together. She went to see Practical Magic 2, which is the movie she wanted to see last time we went to the movies, but decided to see Coyote vs. Acme instead (read my review of that if you want to know what I thought of it), and I of course went to see this movie, Beware Boiúna. A movie I didn't even know what even coming out until a couple of months ago. Like, in August, that's when I first learned about this movie (it might've even been in September) and added to my list of things to review. But honestly, I didn't even think I was even get the chance to see this in theaters. I thought that was going to be yet another movie where I had to watch it after it was released on digital or on physical media (DVD 📀, Blu-Ray 💿, or 4K 💿) like I had to do with We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️ and I will have to do with Onslaught (2026), and a few other movies I was interested in seeing in theaters this year that I didn't get the chance to. 

 

And I can confidently say that of the movies I've seen in the past few weeks, this one is the best. I wouldn't go as far to say it's my favorite movie of the year, but it's definitely one of the better movies I've seen this year, and it's definitely a good one 👍. I had to wait to see it because our movies were playing at different times, with my grandma's movie, Practical Magic 2, playing almost a full hour before mine. Hers started at 4:10pm and mine started 5:10pm. But let me tell you, it was worth the wait 😁. I don't know how well this movie's doing financially, since it barely came out last week, on Friday October 2, 2026, but I hope it does well, and that people go see it because it is a pretty solid creature feature. A pretty solid killer animal movie, and a pretty solid snake movie 🐍. This is what Anaconda (2025) should've been. 

 

That's what people were saying in the comments on the trailer when it dropped, that this was the Anaconda movie we should've gotten instead of that meta self parody starring Jack Black and Paul Rudd and directed by Tom Gormican, and that this was a better Anaconda movie than we got last year in December. And indeed, this is a better Anaconda movie than Anaconda (2025). In fact, they could've just slapped the Anaconda title on it (call it, Anaconda: Beware Boiúna or Anaconda: Curse of Boiúna or whatever), and it would still totally work. You could even keep the aspect of the snake 🐍 in the movie being the legendary protector serpent. That's something I could totally see the franchise doing for a reboot, if that hadn't gone in that meta comedy direction. What a terrible idea. Turning Anaconda into a damn comedy 😒. Making a mockery of the original. This movie shows that you can still make a killer snake movie 🐍 and put it in theaters, and take it seriously. Make it an actual horror film. It doesn't need to be a comedy for it to be seen as "legitimate," it seems the people who made Anaconda (2025) seemed convinced of. 

 

I was actually surprised at how closely they stuck to the concept of the snake 🐍 being a protector serpent, being the actual Boiúna, which is actual mythical serpent from Brazilian mythology 🇧🇷. It's like their equivalent to Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. It's no different from making a movie where Bigfoot is real and kills people, or making a movie where Nessie is real and kills people. Though they've made a lot more killer Bigfoot movies than killer Nessie movies. The only creature feature that I'm aware of where the Loch Ness Monster is real and is the main threat is Loch Ness Terror AKA Beyond Loch Ness, and that was a Sci-Fi Channel original movie. Nevertheless, I still intend on reviewing it some time in the future. Boiúna only kills people who actually deserve it...most of the time (she also attacks and kills anyone and everyone she recognizes as an outsider encroaching on her territory, she's a very territorial serpent), and it spares people who didn't deserve it, or have back up. It even helps out the team of Amazonian natives led by Lena and her brother Jorge take down illegal mining operations going on in the Amazon. Like, it recognizes their crusade is just, and the people they're attacking are unjust, and thus, helps them out by eating those miners, which the team tied up and intentionally left for food. 

 

Don't feel too bad for the miners, because as the movie shows, they're morally bankrupt people willing to massacre entire villages of indigenous Amazonian tribes just so they can (illegally) mine for gold and other valuable minerals and precious metals. Lena and Jorge's family were killed in such a massacre. It's clear that they made the miners as despicable as possible, so that when Jorge's team comes in and violently disrupts their operation, and then offers them all up as food to Boiúna, the audience wouldn't feel that bad for them. Of course, the survey team led by Brennan Malloy and his brother Shawn (who Lena accidentally kills while trying to defend her "friend," Alli) had bad intentions since they were here to survey to land for another illegal mining operation. Basically people who just wanted to make money 💵 and had no consideration for the environment, and the long term negative affects their survey work will have on the environment if they determine the land is suitable for mining. So obviously, they had to go, and they do. 

 

They all die, with Brennan's death being especially satisfying. He starts out as this asshole who wants take revenge on Lena and Alli and kill them for killing his brother, even though he attacked Alli (trying to sexually assault her while he was incredibly drunk 🥴) and was being the aggressor, and then when Boiúna attacks and kills all his men ♂︎ (and I do mean men ♂︎ since he doesn't have a single woman ♀︎ on his team, which is why they're more than okay with being rude to these women ♀︎ and probably even being okay with Shawn raping one of them if it had happened), he becomes a sniffling coward who ultimately leaves Lena behind when she gets trapped in a mud pit while running away from Boiúna. While he does kind of redeem himself when he comes to back to save Lena when she's trying to fight off Boiúna with some kind of constructive equipment, and failing, it's too little too late, and he gets munched by the giant snake 🐍. 

 

The only people who Boiúna kills who didn't really deserve it after the Miguel, Alli, Callum, and Raúl, since they were doctors on a humanitarian mission to provide medicine and medical treatment to indigenous Amazonian tribes facing disease, and Raúl was Lena's adopted father and captain sailing the boat they're using to travel up and down the river. And also that one rebel fighter working with Jorge. But I guess Boiúna is just that territorial and hungry, that she'll attack and eat anyone who encroaches on her territory, regardless of whether they're morally right or wrong. They actually did a pretty good job at convincing the audience that Alli was going to be the main character, and perhaps the final girl ♀︎ (the lone survivor of a horror film). So when she does get killed, it kind of catches you off guard. I guess it's kind of like The Blob (1988), where it convinces one character is going to be the main protagonist, and the hero who's going to save the day and kill the monster, or at least the lone survivor when everyone else does, only to then pull the rug right from under you and have that character die, and have a different character become the protagonist. It's not that easy to pull off since it's usually pretty telegraphed who's going to be the main character. 

 

It's fitting that I bring up that particular movie since the title of this movie, made me think of the opening theme of the original 1958 Blob movie, "Beware the Blob" (which is also the title of the sequel made in 1972). Here, give it a listen. But, it was probably best to have the tough indigenous Amazonian woman ♀︎ who has actual survival skills and isn't a complete push over be the "final girl ♀︎" instead of the white woman ♀︎ who is a foreigner, and incredibly out of place. Even if she did come to try to do some good. She was very mentally unprepared for what was to come, and it's no wonder why she didn't survive for that long, and why she was one of the first people to get killed by Boiúna. But, I liked her, what little we actually see of her in the film. I mean, we actually see a lot of her actually, the entire first half of the movie before Boiúna truly shows up is dedicated to her, and she's in almost every scene towards the beginning of the movie. Which went a long way in making her feel like the main character, so that her eventual death would be an actual surprise. 

 

She also kind of looks like a younger Dakota Johnson, which is funny because Dakota Johnson just had a movie come out recently, Verity, which I saw the trailer to, and left a comment on saying that I'm surprised Dakota Johnson hasn't played the villain in a horror film, considering how strange she is. Someone replied to my comment saying that I was kind of being mean to her by saying that, but I explained to that person that I wasn't trying to be disparaging with my comment. I was saying it in a positive way, that Dakota Johnson is such a weird person, in a good way (most of the time), that she'd perfect to play a horror movie villain. Like, she just has it in her. Just like Tobey Maguire has it in him to play weird, creepy, or crazy characters. People are more than willing to call Tobey Maguire weird and "awkward," and say it in a positive way, but it seems you can't really do the same with Dakota Johnson even though her and Tobey have similar qualities. As people and as actors. 

 

It's actually fitting I make that comparison considering that the two of them were in Spider-Man or Spider-Man adjacent movies, with Tobey Maguire of course playing Spider-Man/Peter Parker in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, and Dakota Johnson playing Madame Web, a Spider-Man villain and occasional ally, in Madame Web. Of course, the character was re-envisioned as being even more heroic (as was pretty much every villain character brought into the failed Sony Spider-Man Universe, or SSU for short), but still. Even the spiders 🕷️ in which Madame Web's clairvoyance is derived came from the Amazonian rainforest, where this film takes place. We got that infamous line in the first trailer to Madame Web that was memed to death: "He was in the Amazon with my mom, where she was researching spiders 🕷️ right before she died." 

 

I haven't seen any of the director, Mike P. Nelson's other work, but he did direct one movie ☝️, which I do fully intend on reviewing some time in the future, The Domestics, a post-apocalyptic action horror movie which I've seen a few clips of. I even have those clipped saved in my Favorites playlist if you want to take a look. Knowing that he directed that, and this movie was so good, makes me even more excited to watch that movie and review it for the blog in the future 😁. If you're someone who watched Anaconda (2025) and was disappointed by it, and wished that we could've gotten a better Anaconda movie, then this would be a great movie wash the taste of that movie out of your mouth. But even if you haven't, even if you haven't watched a single Anaconda movie in your life, I would still recommend this movie. Go support it before it's taken out of theaters. This is one I'll definitely be buying on Blu-Ray 💿 or 4K 💿 when it comes out.