'Beware Boiúna' Review: A Creature Feature With Plenty Of Bite, But No Fun
‘Beware Boiúna’ aims to bring back back some nineties nostalgia with thrills and chills. However, this creature feature forgets to have any fun with its inherently silly premise.
‘Beware Boiúna’ centers on a group of doctors on a mission in the Amazon rain forest giving medicinal aid to locals. However, their mission quickly turns into a fight for survival when a giant ancient predator named Boiúna rears her ugly head and begins hunting them down in her domain.
This creature feature is helmed by director Mike P. Nelson, the man behind the recent remake of ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’, an inspired choice for the material. He’s assembled an impressive cast here with Jessica Rothe, Logan Marshall-Green and Kiana Madeira. All three central performances are terrific. Each of them give game, emotionally charged and physically committed performances as their respective characters. Rothe continues to radiate likability and gravitas as Alli, one of the doctors part of the mission. She can sell horror and trauma like few other actresses can and that is on full display here. Her chemistry with Madeira is also palpable, especially as the two become intertwined in a harrowing situation with Marshall-Green’s Brennan, who’s traveling through the Amazon with his own team for a more morally dubious mission.
Marshall-Green continues to show his versatility and effortless charm, making Brennan an enjoyable character to watch throughout, especially as he becomes increasingly out of his depth against the ancient predator at the film’s center. However, Madeira is the notable standout, bringing an emotional pathos to Lena, a young woman helping escort the medical team through the Amazon as she desperately searches for her missing brother. Especially as the film lets its predator take center stage, Madeira brings a physicality and magnetism that makes her impossible to ignore. She makes the physically and emotionally demanding role look like light work, selling the horror and paranoia of her increasingly more precarious situation exceedingly well. Simply put, she makes for a heroine worth rooting for throughout.
The film’s atmosphere and sound design are also highly immersive. The Amazon setting works wonders for the material, the sights, sounds and ambience pulling the audience in to great effect. A lesser production could’ve chosen to shoot a vast majority of these sequences against a blue screen, but shooting the film on location gives it a much needed authentic and tactile feel that wonderfully sets the stage for the inevitable carnage. The sound design in particular is superb, allowing the audience to feel and hear every slash, crack, slither and crunch, especially as Boiúna begins to protect her domain and decide who lives and who dies.
The film also offers up a fair amount of thrills with its numerous set pieces, these sequences well-staged and executed for the most part as they demonstrate why this giant snake is so heavily feared by the locals. Boiúna herself always looks fantastic, the vfx work surprisingly very impressive as the creature nicely interacts with the physical environments around her to sell the carnage and gruesome thrills. Speaking of Boiúna, the film does an admirable job establishing the lore and mythology of the creature, delving into how she’s the protector of this land and the ultimate arbiter of life and death. The way the film demonstrates this as she interacts with the core group of characters is quite compelling, making her far more than just a physically intimidating threat.
However, despite some scattered entertainment and thrills, the set pieces are heavily hampered by an overreliance on close-up, shaky cam and frenetic editing that largely obscures the visceral action. It doesn’t help that the film sports a very murky visual aesthetic that makes these artistic choices considerable hindrances. It’s clear Nelson and his DP Nick Junkersfeld wanted to create a voyeuristic and claustrophobic visual aesthetic to keep the audience constantly uneasy, but it would’ve benefited the set pieces tremendously to pull the camera back in order to appreciate the top notch stunt work on display. In fact, Boiúna herself is barely seen clearly even long after the build up of her presence has concluded and her bloody hunt truly begins. As a result, these high-octane sequences don’t quite have the bone-chilling bite they should.
The most glaring flaw this genre film suffers from though is its severe lack of humor and fun. This is a needlessly dark and dour film that never leans into the campy nature of its concept and takes itself far too seriously. Considering this is a film about an ancient giant snake and protector choosing who makes it out of the jungle alive, it could’ve benefited tremendously from cracking a smile and delivering its carnage with a slight nod and a wink. Not helping matters is the fact that the film doesn’t flesh out any of its core characters or fully lean into the emotional conflict it establishes early on, the catalyst for why Brennan is hot on the heels of Lena and Alli. It’s a compelling setup that has zero follow through and takes a permanent back seat to Boiúna once she rears her head. As a result, this is a film that ultimately feels far too self-serious and emotionally hollow for its own good.
‘Beware Boiúna’ certainly offers some blood-drenched entertainment value, but its thrills and chills are few and far between as it fails to follow through on the boundless potential of its fun central conceit. This creature feature has plenty of bite, but it needed to lighten up to fully let loose and stand out amongst its fanged peers.