Search - Snakes on a Train on DVD

Great low budget snake movie

slapgup | 02/25/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"While not really a 5 star movie...just want to offset the crappy ratings. More like a 3.5...but still a well made...NOT cheesy...snake flick..I liked it"

I wept.

Robert P. Beveridge | Cleveland, OH | 05/22/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Snakes on a Train (Peter Mervis, 2006)

I originally assumed this was yet another Snakes on a Plane ripoff until I started reading trivia about the movie on various websites. Now, I can't verify this, but it has been said that this was actually going to be the official sequel to one of the strangest movies to get a theatrical release in America in the past decade. Having now watched it, I can understand why the studio ended up disowning it (note I'm making an assumption there); of all the Snakes on a Plane knockoffs I've seen, this is easily the worst. I can think of half a dozen films that would have actually made great sequels to the movie, or were at least good enough to merit a theatrical release. And then there is this.

Plot: Alma (Julia Ruiz, whose only previous experience is playing "Office Hottie" in a TV-movie) has a small problem. She's had a curse placed on her by a brujo (The DaVinci Treasure's A. J. Castro) on her way out of town. She's one of a handful of folks being smuggled on a train, you see. She and the others are in the hold of a rather luxurious passenger train, with a mix of people that looks oddly familiar. And I'm sure I don't need to tell you what the curse is, given the name of the movie.

I'm not going to tell you that this movie is bad because it travels the same basic path as its predecessor. I mean, let's face it, where can you really go when your premise is Snakes on a ___? I expected that. What I didn't expect was that when the budget was (presumably) slashed, every last dollar of the money that was lost seems to have been slated to go to the special effects. One of the things that makes the original movie (and such higher-quality knockoffs as Flight of the Living Dead) so much fun is that the effects are so stupidly over-the-top that you can't help but laugh, and you know the guys who made the movie are laughing with you. But oh, my, we're not laughing with the filmmakers when we're watching these effects. It doesn't help that the acting sets the bar even lower than the original movie did (let's face it, the original was Samuel L. and a bunch of people who couldn't act their collective way out of a paper bag), the pace gives us no tension whatsoever during the setup, and the movie sounds as if the microphones were in the next room.

I'm not going to try and revise my judgment of the film because of my disappointment that this is the sequel to Snakes on a Plane. I'd probably give it a higher rating were it just another bad knockoff. But it's not, and the disappointment is that much greater. * ½

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