Snake Island

Image credit: IMDb

Continuing on the bad eco-horror bender that I’ve apparently started, last night the film of choice was a particularly horrendous piece of work from the early naughties called, Snake Island.

The film tells the story of a group of tourists on African safari who make a unscheduled stop at one Snake Island Lodge and, through a series of mishaps, become stranded. As the guides regale the visitors with superstitious local legends of why the island’s tenants keep mysteriously disappearing, the group gets a first-hand taste of the myths, as one by one they start vanishing.

Absolutely everything about this movie is ridiculous and wrong, laughably so, but to give credit where it is due, I have to say that it’s nice to see a movie in which the monster is not merely some giant member of the species.

But this is where the positives end.

I still cannot work out what this film was and whether it was meant to be taken seriously or not. It begins as this almost adorably amateur attempt at a horror movie, but then it’s like everyone working on it got and drunk and just let their creative juices break onto the floor and make a huge, wet, chunky, mess. It may have been an attempt at taking the piss out of the eco-horror genre, but I'm honestly not sure.

The script is downright horrible featuring characters that have absolutely no substance or likeable qualities, the reactions of everyone (including the damned tour guides) upon encountering snakes are exactly the opposite to what we’ve all been taught to do from the age of six, and then there are some shots and sequences that make absolutely no sense and bring less than nothing to the film.

Image credit: California Herps

Ultimately this movie is like a drunken mash-up of the most memorable scenes from good action-horror movies thrown together and whatever story there is going on underneath all the screaming and hissing is incomprehensible.

While both my partner and laughed through many scenes (so, at least the film was enjoyable in that way), Snake Island really doesn’t offer much to whatever audiences it's trying to snag and I would recommend that you only watch it if you’re out to see something truly dumb and wholly unremarkable in any way, shape, or form.

Director: Wayne Crawford, 2002

Cast: William Katt, Wayne Crawford, Kate Connor, Russel Savadier, Dawn Matthews, Milan Murray, Jason Kennett, Japan Mthembu, Nicola Hanekom, and Seth Zweli Zimu