The 1997 version of Anaconda was an adventure horror film that we all remember because of the kind of fear it managed to create. The 2025 meta reboot of the franchise from Sony had this element of being a spoof when they launched the trailer. When I saw the trailer, I was somewhat pessimistic about the movie since it felt like they were trying to milk the IP value of the first film. However, what is interesting about this version of Anaconda is that they are deliberately using the title to create a spoof that mocks the IP obsession of Hollywood. I think the major flaw in this movie is their creative decision to call it Anaconda, as it attracts the wrong audience.
Doug McCallister is a wedding video creator, and his childhood friend Griff is a struggling actor who works in TV series in supporting roles. These struggling artists decide to take up this mad idea to reboot the Anaconda movie franchise after Griff showed Doug’s family and friends an amateur short film they all made in their teenage years. The risks involved in such a crazy indie mission are what we see in Anaconda.
The first 50 minutes of this movie, technically the first half of this movie as per Indian movie theater standards, will make you feel that you are watching a scam where Sony tricked you into believing that they were genuinely trying to make a reboot. But the latter part of this movie is the real deal. If you are someone who closely follows mainstream movies, and has an idea about how the award season goes, the political stands that will make a movie or a film person an award season favorite, how major studios are squeezing every IP they have to create blockbusters, then this second half is like place where you would feel that “finally somebody decides to talk about it” I mean this has become a universal problem in someways. We have Bollywood obsessing over IPs with stars like Ajay Devgn and Akshay Kumar only doing parts 2, 3, and 4 of their previous movies. The Tamil industry also has this obsession with cracking the Pan-India formula.
Anaconda is like a weirdly unreal spoof where a studio like Sony is mocking themselves and their contemporaries for messing up the process of setting up a movie and supporting original ideas. From Doug being called the white Jordan Peele to how some people rave about Indie ventures without supporting them on a production stage, and how some pretentious indie movies get rave reviews, the last hour of this movie is like a full-blown attack on many things that happen in Hollywood. As I said, the problem is that they marketed it as Anaconda, and most people are coming to the theater anticipating a proper adventure film where the snake would scare the hell out of you. But Tom Gormican’s plan is to show you how rotten the state of things is in Hollywood. The confusion seems to be there for them also, as the movie occasionally slips entirely into that Anaconda zone, detaching from the spoof space for a while.
Jack Black, in his typical style, says the lines and is a joy to watch, especially in the most panicked moments in the movie. There is a certain level of craziness required for this character, and Jack Black simply has it in him. Paul Rudd is also in his Ant-Man safe zone and pulls off the character of Griff with ease. The bromance of these two is also pretty effective. The Mission Impossible 2 star, Thandie Newton, plays one of the gang members here. Steve Zahn plays the role of the most incompetent gang member, who will mess up things, and he was fun to watch.
Set in a universe where the first Anaconda was an actual movie, this reboot would have had a different reception if it were perhaps titled “Hello Hollywood” and wasn’t a Christmas release. Even as a spoof, this movie is not a perfect one, as it takes too many generic beats to reach that zone of mockery. I have a feeling that in the long run, when people realize that it should be looked at like Mr. Bean’s Holiday, this version of Anaconda, especially its final hour, would get a different reception.
