Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
This is a beautifully art designed movie with a Gothic setting and a wonderfully dark sense of humor, based on three of a series of children’s books, including one called The Reptile Room published in 1999. The cast is outstanding, especially Jim Carrey’s performance. (The movie got 4 Oscar nominations, winning one for makeup).
After their parents die in a house fire, the 3 Baudelaire orphans are sent to live with their closest relative Count Olaf, an evil actor who tries to kill them to collect their inheritance. The children survive and are then brought to their uncle Monty’s house. He’s an eccentric herpetologist but he’s the warmest and most normal adult in the movie - until he’s murdered. Monty has a yard full of snake statues and topiary and a reptile room full of calling Pacific Treefrogs and free roaming reptiles, including a giant tortoise, a huge monitor lizard, an enormous albino Python and other abnormally-pigmented corn and milk snakes, a two-headed cobra in a glass cage, a toad with three eyes, and a gigantic “Incredibly Deadly Viper” that was mis-named as a prank because it's a harmless gentle animal that likes to play with children. Monty also likes to sing and play an autoharp with a milk snake named Petunia wrapped around his arm. When evil uncle Count Olaf appears in disguise as his new assistant named Stefano, the kids write a message on Petunia so that when she wraps herself around Monty’s arm, he learns that Stefano is an imposter.
Most of the snakes and reptiles in Monty’s house are real, but some are probably computer-generated effects and others are animatronic snake effects that the credits indicate were created by KNB EFX Group.