Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid (2004)

Credits / Details

37%
Overall Rating

Ranked #2,954
...out of 20,725 movies

Genres / Traits: Action Horror Jungle Film Natural Horror Snakes

Connections: Anaconda

Once every seven years, the extraordinary Blood Orchid blooms deep in the impenetrable jungles of Borneo. To find this rare herbal source of youth and immortality, a group of researchers funded by the New York pharmaceutical firm, Wexel Hall, arrives in the island, unbeknownst to them that the area is crawling with an aggressive subspecies of giant Anaconda. And, to make matters worse, the same attributes that the ambitious scientists are seeking, have augmented not only the snakes' already enormous size but also they've increased their strength. Can they survive the attack of the super-reptiles, or will they all suffer the same fate as the unwise intruders in Anaconda? --IMDb

Review by Chad
Added: February 14, 2005

In this sequel to 1997's Anaconda, we find two guys by way of Gordon Mitchell (Morris Chestnut) and Jack Byron (Matthew Marsden) attempting to convince some investors to give them the cash to travel to Borneo in order to find the Blood Orchid. This flower, they explain, repairs living cells to the point where they live much longer than normal, resulting in a much longer life-span. The investors agree on the amount of cash that is to be made from this flower, so our two gentlemen wrangle up a team to go along with them into the jungles of Borneo. We have computer-geek Cole Burris (Eugene Byrd), scientist number one (and good ol' southern girl) Sam Rogers (Kadee Strickland), scientist number two (and a Jennifer Lopez look-alike) Gail Stern (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), and finally, Bennifer himself, scientist number three - Ben Douglas (Nicholas Gonzalez). Our gang travels to Borneo in short time, but find out that they have arrived in the midst of the rainy season, meaning that their chances of finding someone with a boat to cart them down the river is slim to none; that is, until they hear of a local by the name of Bill Johnson (Johnny Messner) who will do just about anything for the right price. Bill demands fifty thousand dollars for the boat ride, which our heroes initially scoff at... but, when they realize that the flower only blooms once every seven years, and that the blooming cycle only lasts for another week, and that it wouldn't make for a very entertaining movie if they walked away, they reconsider the offer. Accompanied by his trusty side-kick Tran (Karl Yune) and pet monkey Kong, Bill takes the group down the river and through the woods to find the flower... only to find out that the local anaconda population has also been consuming the flower, causing them to grow to massive sizes.

I wasn't a huge fan of the original movie in this series by a long shot, but since I happened to receive a review copy of this movie for the grand price of zero dollars (and zero cents), I decided to pop it in and give it a shot. The good news, with regard to our feature film, is that it actually turned out to be much more enjoyable than the original. The storyline is pretty much a direct rip from the original with some flower nonsense thrown in to avoid being a total rehash, but things do tend to move along better and the cast, while certainly nothing stellar, is better than the one that was to be found in series entry number one. Sure, we have all of the necessary character stereotypes that we have come to expect from a film of this caliber - the token comedic-relief black guy, the evil foreigner, the do-gooder female, and we even have a lady who could pass for J.Lo's twin - but they do manage to put on a more entertaining show than the characters in the original.

Now comes the bad news. Yes, this film was more enjoyable than the original, but not by a whole lot. Yes, the cast is better here, but again, not by a whole lot. If you were a fan of the preceding film in the series or any of the countless clones, you'll love this one... however, if you weren't too impressed by those films, then this one will do nothing to get you hooked on the CGI-snake-mayhem style of films. While on the subject of CGI snakes, the effects work was certainly better here than what was found in the first movie of the series. There's a few shots of the snake moving about underwater that look quite convincing, and definitely won my approval. Of course, the snake did have to leave the water more than a few times, and when that happened, the CGI effects wound up shot to hell. The snakes wind up looking almost cartoonish in spots, and there's even (at least) two spots of extremely sloppy editing work where you can spot holes in the side of the snake... literal holes, meaning you can see right through the snake, and that effect certainly wasn't intended by the film-maker. Finally, we have that cursed monkey that Billy carries around with him. If you're a fan of constant extreme close-ups of monkey face, you have stumbled upon a movie that will thrill you to no end. Every few minutes, we're treated to a zoom of the monkey yelling, the monkey grabbing food, the monkey jumping around, and everything else you'd expect a monkey to do short of drinking its own urine. Hell, the monkey wound up with more screen time than the first-killed member of the group.

Worth a rental only if you enjoyed Anaconda and want a second helping of the content that was found there. Otherwise, I'd advise skipping right on over this one and finding something a wee bit more entertaining. 4/10.

#1: Nirrad - added January 5, 2008 at 6:06pm
OMG. This movie was just on TV. It is the most annoying movie ever. All the movie was, was a bunch of people screaming over and over. That Cole guy I think his name is (One of the black ones) was getting on my nerves. Acting was way over the top, I was hoping that he would die in a brutal way, too bad he didn't. If I was in this situation and there was someone like Cole, I'd kill him myself. Near the end of the film I turned the channel for about a minute because I honestly started getting extremely agitated. The part when one of the girls falls into the pit of snakes, she sounded like she was yodeling. I personally son't know how the gore was, as I assume it was edited, so I can't comment on that. This is one of the worse movies I've ever seen, and most annoying. In my opinion, the original is 100 times better.