Beware Boiúna

It’s just a really, really scary movie about a really, really, really big snake.

Mike P. Nelson’s rip-roaring creature feature is surprising both for how attuned it is to the rhythms of its setting and for how little interest it has in condescendingly exorcising our white guilt.

Giant snake movie Beware Boiúna has its moments and some appreciated twists on the usual formula, but it also suffers from feeling overlong and — like its title creature — isn’t actually on-screen nearly enough.

Choppy, meandering, and frustratingly dim (literally and metaphorically), Beware Boiúna squanders a great concept, and swamps the moments it does manage to deliver under loads of narrative and visual murk.

Beware Boiúna aims to be a gritty, 70s-era thriller, but it lacks the thrilling substance to make that comparison apt. This snake lacks both charm and bite.

There is one phenomenal sequence in the middle of this frustrating movie that’s almost worth seeing, but it only speaks to how much the rest of this creature feature doesn’t work by being an oasis in the center of so much nonsense.

Subpar CG is hidden behind so much foliage that the rare moments in which la Boiúna is visible are embarrassing, and the rest of the time the audience is squinting to work out what’s going on.