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Snakes in Movies   Mud (2012)   Spoiler Alert ! 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 coming-of-age adventure about young boys who encounter a fugitive named Mud (Matthew McConaughey.) A theme of fear of snakes and hatred of them runs throughout this film. In the first few minutes we a boy throw a large rock into a puddle full of writhing black snakes for no apparent reason other than he thinks all snakes must die, covering two ridiculous snake movie myths - that snakes swarm in groups (especially in the water) and that you have to kill every snake you see even if they aren't a threat. In reality, groups of snakes don't hang around in puddles as they're doing here. The boy later tells Mud that he hates snakes and Mud says "That's 'cause God put 'em here for us to fear. We knew to be afraid of snakes long before we even got in to this world." He throws a rope to the boy and tells him to put it around his bed because a snake won't cross a braided rope. (That's another ridiculous snake myth.) Mud tells the boys that he was bitten under the armpit by a cottonmouth when he was 10 years old while swimming in a river. He has a huge snake tattoo from his chest around his back and around his arm to the back of his hand which he says is a reminder: "Don't get bit." Later we see a man shooting a water snake from the roof of his houseboat with a rifle, again, for no good reason. With all of that preparation, it was obvious that someone was going to get bitten by a snake in this movie and sure enough, one of the boys falls into that same puddle full of snakes we saw earlier. Those snakes must never leave their wallow. (It looks like they might have used some live racers or Indigo snakes or maybe black ratsnakes, but then again, they might all be CGI snakes.) Mud jumps in to save the boy (despite the fact that he said earlier he would die if he got bitten again because anti-venom only works one time (another myth). He puts the boy in a boat and starts taking him to a hospital to treat the bite, which is the best thing you can do for a snakebite. He even uses a pen to mark the bite location and to keep track of the spread of the venom. That is usually done at the hospital after anti-venom has been administered, but it's still a surprisingly smart depiction of dealing with snakebite for a film that is out of touch with reality regarding snakes and their behavior. It's really just another film that inaccurately portrays snakes so they can be a convenient and unoriginal plot device. Other than that, this was a pretty good film.