PYTHON ISLAND (2022)

PYTHON ISLAND (2022)

Tagline: Prepare for The Hiss of Death

(Action, Adventure, Why Did It Have to Be Snakes) [PG-13]

Note: This movie was not given an MPAA rating, but it would have gotten an [PG-13]. The movie was also known as GIANT PYTHON. 

In this one a boy and his father are out on a small raft when they end up coming to an island nearby that is basically so cursed they call it “cannibal island”. The boy decides to go check it out leaving his father behind. When the father can’t find him he returns to their village for help. The boy is rescued and ends up growing up to be a geneticist. As it turns out rumors of the island possibly possessing a substance that can give you eternal life have driven some people to want to go back to the island for nefarious reasons. It doesn’t take long before everyone finds out the island is full of danger, mystery, and death in the form of plants that will eat your face off, or poisonous snakes and a giant venomous serpent.  

This one is in a series of Chinese films I have been watching lately that I can only really describe as the stuff you would have seen on the SYFY channel or that THE ASYLUM would have made. The big difference is that some of these Chinese films just have far better artistry behind them. The CGI isn’t great, but it is certainly more adequate than what THE ASYLUM was putting out back in the day. I like checking out how other countries handle b-movies, and the most interesting ones seem to come out of Japan or China when we start talking about films not made in the US or Canada.

This movie has some pretty interesting design work, but for the most part, the main python looks a little bit too “plastic” for my taste. The giant snake from SNAKEs (2018) was better. As a director though Dicai Zhang does a pretty good job with snake films overall. He has only directed 2 movies and both were about giant snakes. The other movie aside from this was MONSTER PYTHON. 

Where this movie fails is in making the plot too convoluted. Having one character go from just wanting to be rich to literally being willing to kill everyone on the island if necessary. It’s pretty bonkers and nothing sets up for this sudden change in attitude. Even if they are trying to say the “snake bite” made him crazy, that was well after he started going bonkers. I also question some of the motivations behind the people that wanted to exploit the island and how far they were willing to go to do it, but we see these types of motivations in real life, so it’s not super farfetched.  

Zai Mire takes the female lead as Lily and does a superb job. She has 3 other movies out aside from this one, but I am not familiar with her other work. Two of them look pretty rad, one is called THE BROCADE MOUSE ROYAL CAT NINE DEEP BLOOD WOLF, and the other one is XIE MOUNTAIN: THE UNDERGROUND DRAGON. Tan Jimin was less convincing as Lily’s mom Fiona, but I guess it’s not that uncommon to see a mother that is basically a wicked witch and a daughter that is Snow White with a crossbow. Dongfeng Yue is pretty intense as Boss Zhao. Of the main cast, Dongfeng has the most acting experience. Bai Na Ri Su plays Lin and I know they wanted us to like him, but they almost make him too “lucky” in the movie to really be able to relate. 

There are a bunch of off-putting twists in the storyline here that lower the score for me. I don’t like when the character comes to a conclusion, then changes what they think, then changes what they think again all in the span of 15 minutes. I would rather they had taken the character's “certainty” out and replaced it with “maybe this” or “maybe that” until everything was revealed. 

The rest was pretty interesting but less in my wheelhouse than SNAKES was. It lands at a 4 out of 7.

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