Animal Horror
The creature feature is a subgenre of horror films that takes many shapes. Werewolves, demonic sewer-dwelling humanoids, flesh-eating fish, and giant Amazonian snakes. There was just something about the late 1990s where animals that we saw on National Geographic got placed in horror films and attacked a cast of victims.
At the forefront of all of this is 1997’s Anaconda starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, and Owen Wilson. A film that by no means feels like it should be a classic, and yet here we are still talking about it. Anaconda has some cringe CGI, but some really terrifying puppetry work for the giant snake. There are some shocking moments in the film’s climax.
Its plot follows a group of documentary filmmakers looking to do a project on a forgotten tribe in the Amazon jungle, but things take a turn when they encounter a stranger on the river bank who is in pursuit of a giant snake. Anaconda is not the first to do a film of this nature, and it sure isn’t the last, even in the sense that the movie spawned a few forgotten sequels.
So much so, that here are 10 best movies to pair with the giant snake horror film, Anaconda.
Cujo
The Stephen King adaptation made you utterly terrified of man’s best friend. So much so that by the climax, you literally want the vicious, rabid Saint Bernard to die. A dog as the villain in a creature feature is a fresh new take on the subgenre.
Cujo makes for a perfect double feature with Anaconda, as it has intriguing character arcs for both of its female protagonists. Jennifer Lopez may be above a movie like this now, but at the time, she owned this film from start to finish. As for Cujo’s Dee Wallace, she may go down as one of the best final girls of all time.
Crawl
Crawl is one of the newer films to make this list. The 2019 release is about a woman who ignores the calls to evacuate her Florida hometown as a hurricane is headed right for it. Her mission is to find her father, whom she has lost contact with. She finds him injured in his home during the storm.
The issue grows as she not only must get him to safety but now must fight off a pack of hungry alligators who have swum their way into her harm. Crawl and Anaconda share great set designs in their respective films. Not one frame of Crawl feels like a sound stage, and most of the film is shot on one. Anaconda looks so on point with its set design because most of the film was indeed shot in Brazil.
Lake Placid
To keep it going with giant reptiles, Lake Placid, like Anaconda, has a bit of a cult following. The film follows a group of scientists, lawmen and women who are investigating the possibility of a giant man-eating a crocodile in a lake in Maine. They end up being right. Lake Placid has big scares, awesome set pieces, and perfectly timed comic relief. It was one of many films in the late 1990s that came out due to Anaconda’s success in having an out-of-the-ordinary giant reptile and included an ensemble cast as well.
Arachnophobia
Most people who don’t like snakes also get on edge with spiders. Arachnophobia is the story of a venomous spider who hitches a ride in the coffin of his prey from Venezuela to California. There, a doctor who is utterly terrified of spiders encounters the dangerous spread of the deadly bread of spiders that have taken over the town he just moved to.
Like most of these films, on paper, Arachnophobia sounds like a B-movie. But thanks to performances by Jeff Daniels and John Goodman in comical supporting roles, the film sells and makes your skin crawl. Steven Spielberg is the executive producer of it, so you know it needs to work. Don’t let the trailer fool you; it shows you its quirky comedy side, but the movie builds tension like you wouldn’t believe.
Alligator
The 1980 thriller Alligator plays itself like a police procedural at times, as it follows a Los Angeles police detective investigating a slew of murders that lead him down into the sewer system to learn of a giant Alligator that’s out for blood. Anaconda and Alligator both have some fun animatronic creatures in their respective films. To push you even further into watching this film, Quentin Tarantino loves it so much that when he cast Robert Forester in his film Jackie Brown, Tarantino believed that Forester was just playing the same character he is in Alligator.
The Birds
Here is a hot take for the midway point of the list. An Alfred Hitchcock classic to pair with a JLo-led horror film. The Birds tackles themes of humanity’s failures to protect nature. Every animal attack film or creature feature has underlying themes like that. It surely must be somewhere buried in Anaconda. Either way, The Birds is an utter classic that is still studied to this day and is also a film mixed into some controversy with how Hitchcock treated leading actress Tippi Hedren during the shoot.
Piranha
The original Joe Dante-directed cult classic (with a sequel directed by James Cameron) is about the release of a batch of vicious piranhas into the waters near a kids’ summer camp. Now the race is on to stop them before they arrive and cause tons of harm. You’ve probably heard the term cult classic a few times (second time in this entry); Piranha is just that, just like the film it is being compared to.
It has a great cast, doesn’t take itself too seriously, but still gets its point across for a fun audience viewing. Anaconda is loaded with its campy moments; Piranha is as well. It’s a B movie that feels inspired by who it’s ripping off, rather than trying to just plain old rip it off.
Jaws
Speaking of films Piranha ripped off none other than the granddaddy of them all, Jaws. Maybe Jaws should top this list; maybe it shouldn’t, but it does deserve to be high up on it regardless. Jaws is the king of all animal attack films. It still scares audiences to this day. There are plenty of references to it in Anaconda, the looming theme music to get you scared.
Both films have two lead protagonists, and there are many POV shots of the snake on the hunt, just like the iconic ones of the hungry great white shark. Jaws broke down barriers for films like Anaconda, for better or for worse.
Deep Blue Sea
Deep Blue Sea almost repeated the formula that Anaconda used, but Deep Blue Sea only had a bigger budget. Deep Blue Sea was a summer blockbuster about scientists who may have found the cure for Alzheimer’s by extracting brain tissue from DNA-mutated sharks. This goes awry when the sharks break open the free-roaming underwater tank they were in, flooding the secluded facility.
The argument has been made about which film is the better film; just read Reddit to learn more. Many feel Deep Blue Sea has the advantage due to its casting, set pieces, and one of the best on-screen deaths of all time that Samuel L. Jackson still jokes about to this day.
Snakes on a Plane
Maybe, in terms of quality, there are way better films on this list than the number one spot. Still, Snakes on a Plane may be the perfect pairing with Anaconda. If you think of the most iconic killer snake films that should’ve just been another B-movie, does it get any better than these two? They are both over-the-top and can’t be taken seriously. In some ways, Snakes on a Plane tops Anaconda just with one “mother f*ckin” line delivered by its lead, Samuel L. Jackson.
So there we have it, our 10 movie alternatives to watch when you’re finished watching Anaconda.
What do you think of our picks? Do you agree? Are there any notable omissions? Let us know in the comments below!