"The Hunters Will Become The Hunted."
This is the second movie in the Anaconda (1997) franchise but it's not a real sequel. There is only one brief mention of what happened to the documentary film crew in the first movie to let us know we're at a later date in the same universe. The action is moved to Borneo from South America, and nobody from the cast of the original movie returns. Unlike the made-for-TV sequels that follow, it has higher production values than most movies made for TV. The Anaconda effects are good, if not completely realistic. So far it has been followed up by three more movies in the franchise - Anacondas 3: Offspring (2008), Anacondas: Trail of Blood (2009) and a cross-franchise sequel Lake Placid vs. Anaconda (2015.)
A group of young people working for the Wexel Hall pharmaceutical company rush off to Borneo hoping to get rich by collecting some Blood Orchids, a miraculous "fountain of youth" flower that can prolong life. Wexel Hall expects to make a drug from the flower that will be bigger than Viagra, making them billions and billions of dollars. But the flowers only bloom for several months once every seven years, and they are only in bloom for one more week, so they're in a huge hurry. And the trip is complicated by other problems - they need to take a boat upriver, but it's the rainy season and the rivers are very dangerous, and also, it's Anaconda breeding season, a time when the snakes get together in giant mating balls where the orchids grow, and these Anacondas are enormous because they keep growing until they die and the orchids have been prolonging their lives. They have grown much bigger than the snakes in the first Anaconda movie, and they're faster, stronger, and hungrier, too.
And there's more to worry about than the giant monster snakes - there are leaches, poisonous spiders, giant waterfalls, headhunters, huge crocodiles, and confrontations with other people on the expedition.
You can guess what happens next - lots of people die, and lots of giant snakes die.
The end.
Or is it?
Of course it isn't, there are three more movies in the franchise following this one.
So far.
I hate to be the one to tell you that the giant Anacondas we see in this movie are not real snakes - they're made by a combination of technologies that include animatronics, props, prosthetics, and computer generated images. So forget about looking for one at your local pet store. And forget about looking for them in Borneo, too. Anacondas are only found in South America. |