![]() ![]() FauntLeRoy approaches it, as a bright, clean space full of strong, slightly yellow-tinted light and plenty of open room below the trees. The Romanian forest can't compete with that, particularly not with the way that director and cinematographer Don E. They're not scary - they're not even tense - but they've got some moody atmosphere. And there really is a certain presence that those environments bring to the film, a sense of claustrophobic, ominous green, along with the unyielding muddy wetness of a good-sized river. We're a long way from the low heights of 1997's Anaconda and 2004's Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, neither one of which is any damn good as a horror movie, but both of which at least were shot in tropical rainforests. We're not talking '70s grind house levels here, but there are quite a few more jets and puddles of blood than I was expecting, across the film's running time. And in the same stretch of the woods, a team of some kind of scientists played by Anglo men and Romanian women are happily bumbling along, on their way to a research camp that has been the site of a slaughter that also demonstrates how much gore the censors were okay with. Amanda Hayes (Crystal Allen), still traumatised by her experiences last time, has dedicated herself to find Peter's lab and eradicating it, destroying any risk of the giant snakes making their way into the world once and for all she runs into Alex (Călin Stanciu), a hiker, and drags him into her quest. Wexel Hall executive Murdoch (John Rhys-Davies, given more to do than in Offspring, but does it with less hammy élan) sends a team led by Eugene (Emil Hostina) - ah, yes, "Eugene", great bone-chilling name for a mercenary - to find Peter's serum. ![]() ![]() ![]() Shortly after thus catching us up to speed, he is devoured by his own creation. Peter has discovered that the right distillation of hybrid blood orchids can not only prolong life, but effectively make his subjects invincible: he has found his anacondas can even re-grow their heads, in a goofy and delightful visual effect that goes right up to the limits of what this film's CGI budget can afford, and what level of gore the Sci Fi Channel censors are comfortable with. I was definitely not expecting this level of commitment to series mythology in the fourth Anaconda film, but I'm honestly a little charmed by it. The thing this time: in the wake of the last film, Wexel Hall scientist Peter Reysner (Zoltan Butuc) has gone rogue, taking the last surviving test anaconda to a mine deep in the Romanian woods, where he has managed to create a stable population of blood orchids to continue his experiments. The story basically just does one thing, unlike the two-things-with-a-prologue approach taken by that film, which is appreciated in the context of a made-for-cable movie about a mutant CGI snake. It's considerably better-paced, most importantly: at 89 minutes, it's only two minutes shorter than Offspring, but it's not remotely as draggy and disordered. Comparing the two films, there's absolutely no contest: the fourth movie in the Anaconda franchise (and the last one, barring a 2015 crossover with the Lake Placid franchise) is a distinct, if not always substantial improvement on its immediate predecessor. I will say this for 2009's Anacondas: Trail of Blood - it's not much, but I'll say it - it's surprising that a film made directly back-to-back with Anaconda 3: Offspring isn't much worse. ![]()
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