Fantastic Fest 2026 Review: BEWARE BOIÚNA is a Bumbling Big-Ass Creature Feature

After bringing Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025) to Fantastic Fest last year in secret, Mike P. Nelson returned to open this year's festivities with his big-ass snake movie, Beware Boiúna. But where last year's Christmas Horror remake was a treat, this year's “When Animals Attack” thriller is a lump of coal. What sets itself up as the Anaconda reboot we deserve sputters into a poorly shot and blurrily edited creature feature. If you've got a "Titan" of a reptile, let us see the beast! Unfortunately, Beware Boiúna doesn't have the means to deliver what a legend like this deserves.

Jessica Rothe and Kiana Madeira star as travelers into the Amazon on a medical humanitarian excursion. They intend to help communities along the Curuçá River by providing healthcare the locals don't usually receive. Then they encounter Logan Marshall-Green's Brennan Malloy and his brother, outsiders the locals refer to in passing as colonizers. After a drunken night leads to excess debauchery, both groups find themselves at odds with one another. Then, as tensions boil over, their feud complicates even further when a mythical serpent known as "Boiúna" appears and starts devouring adventurers with no prejudice.

Alan B. McElroy's screenplay wades into culturally significant waters, about foreigners exploiting the Amazon for resources and such. Madeira's engineer type has a dual motive: she searches for her rebellion-leading brother, who sabotages these activities along the water. Whether it's environmental destruction, mining greed, or spiritual destruction, Beware Boiúna takes a stance against destroying what Mother Nature has built. That's when McElroy's screenplay shines, as Malloy comes to terms with his intrusion into the Amazon.

But you're here for the colossal snake antics. Sadly, that's where Nelson fails. For too long, we're tethered to the do-gooding vessel and Malloy's eventual stalking—Boiúna's nowhere to be seen for a long, dull, uninteresting stretch. Character development isn't rich enough to have us care about botflies growing in the English-accented doctor, nor does the drama effectively build between rival parties. We float along for what seems like hours, without creature-feature respite outside of some clean jungle scenery that looks decent on screen.

Finally, we get our Boiúna attack—and gosh, is it underwhelming. Cinematographer Nick Junkersfeld can't hold the camera steady during chaos, most likely to hide digital effects that can't sustain prolonged exposure. It's doubly frustrating because the most vicious attacks happen under the blanket of night, while editing confounds cinematic geography. It's a whirling mess of terrified humans and scaly glimpses of a gargantuan snake in back-end pieces that jumbles together.

What rocks are the few shots that are allowed to exist in their glory: Madeira in a construction vehicle's cab getting constricted; Marshall-Green with a chainsaw; Rothe's come-to realization in a bad, bad place. But these are mere minutes in a slogging monster flick that doesn't do justice to its titular monster. At times, you wonder why Nelson made the movie he did because he can't execute tension, gore, or suspense with any impressive technical flourishes. Nelson has no sense of blocking; whatever intrigue happens on screen gets lost in a flurry of editing cuts meant to cover the snake's most vicious material.

Frankly, there's not much more to say. Beware Boiúna does not excel in its simplicity. Nelson presents victims, a titanic species, and this sense of Amazonian culture that sneaks into scenes for a gut punch. The result is underwhelming, with a streamlined approach that offers nothing but generic representations. And even then, there's no second gear or sublime distinction to make this a Mike P. Nelson big snake movie. It's just … what it is. And, disappointingly, for the worse.

Movie Score: 2.5/5