Beware Boiuna review: Middling creature feature shies away from baring teeth
Mike P Nelson’s film is stuck between lofty horror ambitions and underwhelming genre thrills.
The film follows a crew of medics on a six-week humanitarian mission deep in the Colombian Amazon, where they enter the territory of Boiuna, a giant mythic serpent.
Don’t show the monster could be the motto for monster films. The less the audience sees of it, the more they imagine. Steven Spielberg famously used the shark’s fin in Jaws to create dread, a creative solution to the practical problems he faced on set (the mechanical shark kept breaking down). Except that it was never a formula. Years later, with bigger budgets and better technology, Spielberg showed us dinosaurs in all their glory in Jurassic Park (1993). Even a less accomplished creature feature like Anaconda (1997) didn’t shy away from showing its giant serpent on a rampage.
In Beware Boiuna, however, the reluctance to reveal the titular creature feels like director Mike P. Nelson chickening out. Its presence is conveyed through unimaginative sound effects and shots shrouded in darkness. Whatever little is seen inspires neither awe nor amazement. Any viewer expecting to see their money’s worth on screen would feel cheated.
Identity crisis
Nelson’s film, co-written by Tony Giglio and Alan B McElroy, can’t decide whether it wants to be elevated horror or a creature feature delivering straightforward genre thrills. The story follows a crew of medics on a six-week humanitarian mission deep in the Colombian Amazon, where they enter the territory of Boiuna, a giant mythic serpent. The filmmakers try to ground the premise in realism, paying attention to the grease, motor and hardware of the boat, while establishing the rainforest’s hostility through caimans and mosquitoes that lay eggs on the skin. The dangers are manifold, even before the titular creature appears.
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The human threat comes from illegal gold miners, whose presence introduces a conflict between those who exploit the rainforest and those who belong to it. Lena (Kiana Madeira), an indigenous woman travelling with the medics, was orphaned and displaced alongside her brother by miners who murdered their parents. Boiuna, we are told, is nature’s way of restoring balance, a protector that punishes those who wreak havoc on the land. It is an intriguing premise, but the film never fully develops Lena’s connection to the serpent. In one striking image, she emerges covered in black sludge, staring into the distance as though she has become an embodiment of Boiuna herself. The suggestion of a spiritual bond is never taken much further.
The characters, meanwhile, are familiar genre types: Alli (Jessica Rothe), the nervous outsider; Lena, the tough woman who knows the terrain; a professorial expedition leader; Callum (Will Close), an entitled jerk; and Brennan (Logan Marshall-Green), the obvious villain. The film occasionally subverts our expectations, particularly when it shifts its focus from Alli to Lena. But its narrative surprises often feel contrived.
Unconvincing horror
Brennan’s eventual change of heart is unearned; characters presumed dead reappear when convenient and Boiuna herself seems to alternate between protecting Lena and threatening her according to the demands of the plot.
The film’s attempts at elevated horror are equally unconvincing. A rape scenario introduces a darker strain of human violence, but the filmmakers do little with its emotional consequences. The idea of people confronting their own cruelty while a larger threat looms over them could have given the story greater depth. Instead, these elements feel like additional complications in a screenplay struggling to sustain its drama.
The film fares no better when it comes to staging suspense. A sequence involving a broken wooden bridge and crocodiles swimming below should be a nail-biter, but excessive cutting and unconvincing choreography rob it of tension.
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Characters repeatedly stumble into danger for reasons that feel contrived, while their apparent lack of fear makes the threat seem less immediate. A small, amusing touch comes when Brennan plays Snake on his phone while pursuing the medics’ boat into the prohibited zone. It is a neat joke, but the eventual confrontation fails to deliver on its promise.
What makes a creature feature work is not simply the size of its monster, but the rigour with which it establishes its rules. Every escape must feel precarious; every decision must carry consequences. Beware Boiuna has the ingredients for a gripping survival thriller and gestures towards an interesting story about indigenous displacement and ecological retribution. But its premise, character arcs and action never quite cohere. Neither effective elevated horror nor consistently entertaining creature feature, it is time-pass at best. For a film about a giant snake chasing people in the Amazon, there is surprisingly little here to make the audience feel fear.
