Anaconda (2025) plays like cracking open your old Trapper Keeper and finding a chaotic shrine to your misspent youth: stickers peeling at the edges, detention slips you definitely earned, and a half‑melted Jolly Rancher fused to a math worksheet you never finished. It’s messy, loud, proudly stupid, and somehow exactly what your inner latchkey kid has been waiting for. Tom Gormican directs with the swagger of someone who knows this thing is destined for cult‑movie immortality whether anyone admits it or not. It’s bad — but it’s the kind of bad that loops back into good through sheer force of personality, the same way early Minecraft felt before it took over the planet.
Jack Black and Paul Rudd anchor the chaos as Doug and Griff, two Gen‑X best friends who decide the cure for their midlife slump is to remake their favorite childhood movie: Anaconda. Steve Zahn’s Kenny and Thandiwe Newton’s Claire round out the crew, doing their best to keep the whole production from turning into a jungle‑soaked therapy session. Together, they tromp through the Amazon with the exact energy of adults who once slept on futons and still believe they could survive in the wild on vibes and stubbornness alone.
Then comes the spider‑bite scene — the one destined for eternal meme circulation. Black gets chomped by a spider roughly the size of a Pop‑Tart and collapses like he’s auditioning for a Victorian fainting couch. The group panics, scrambles, and lands on a solution that feels like it was brainstormed by sleep‑deprived camp counselors. Zahn’s expression cycles through every stage of emotional resistance before he finally commits, fully aware this moment will follow him for the rest of his career. It’s juvenile, ridiculous, and absolutely the point where the movie earns its cult‑classic merit badge.
And because Gormican refuses to let the chaos breathe, the next major set piece is Jack Black barreling through the jungle with a squealing pig strapped to his back like a deranged, mud‑slick BabyBjörn. He’s screaming, the pig’s screaming, branches are slapping past like nature itself is judging them, and the whole thing feels like a fever dream you’d swear you hallucinated if there weren’t witnesses. It’s the exact flavor of nonsense that would’ve happened when your Tamagotchi glitched at 3 a.m. — frantic, bizarre, and permanently etched into your brain.
The cameos from the original cast push the film from unhinged reboot into gloriously weird reunion special. Jennifer Lopez drops in with a presence sharp enough to slice through vines. Ice Cube strolls through with the same unbothered energy he had in ’97, radiating the vibe of someone who’s been waiting decades to be proven right about giant snakes. Their appearances don’t elevate the movie so much as intensify its already delightful weirdness.
Meanwhile, the snake slithers through the film with the confidence of a creature fully aware it’s the real star. The CGI oscillates between “legitimate theatrical release” and “did someone render this on a toaster,” but that wobble is part of the charm. This serpent has personality. It has opinions. It has a fanbase forming in real time.
In fact, the snake looks like it was created by three different VFX houses that absolutely did not coordinate. One moment it’s a sleek, high‑budget apex predator ready for a prestige nature doc; the next, it moves like someone accidentally toggled ragdoll physics in a 2002 PC game. It’s glorious. It’s maddening. It’s the film’s entire thesis, and somehow it works.
By the end, you’re not sure whether you watched a reboot, a parody, or a midlife crisis shot in IMAX. But you are sure you had a blast. Anaconda (2025) is destined for midnight screenings, ironic merch drops, and that strange corner of fandom where sincerity and sarcasm hold hands. It’s bad in the most brilliant way — and it’s absolutely ours.
MPAA Rating: PG-13.
Runtime: 99 mins
Director: Tom Gormican
Writer: Tom Gormican; Kevin Etten
Cast: Jack Black; Paul Rudd; Steve Zahn
Genre: Action | Comedy
Tagline: It's the movie they're dying to remake
Memorable Movie Quote: "Welcome to Hollywood, cupcake!"
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Official Site:
Release Date: December 25, 2025
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: A group of friends are going through a mid-life crisis. They decide to remake a favorite movie from their youth but encounter unexpected events when they enter the jungle.
