Beware … or be square (CREDIT: Lionsgate)
Starring: Kiana Madeira, Jessica Rothe, Logan Marshall-Green, Jackson Bews, Juan Pablo Shuk, Will Close, Vicente Peña, Mateo Moreno, Jaime Newball, Christophe de Geest, Nelson Camayo
Director: Mike P. Nelson
Running Time: 104 Minutes
Rating: R for Bloody Chomping, and Language
Release Date: October 2, 2026 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: A team of humanitarian medical workers are doing some fine life-saving work along the Colombian Amazon, but they should have brushed up on the area’s mythology before they headed down there. Maybe then they would have realized there would be other deadly dangers to deal with in addition to the diseases. In particular, there’s the giant serpent known as “Boiúna”, who stalks the river as she pleases, ready to slurp up whatever crosses her path. There’s also some human conflict between the medical team and a group of foresters after a frightening altercation turns irrevocably violent. But Boiúna doesn’t particularly care about any of that. Instead, she’s just hungry for anybody she encounters, no matter what’s going on in their personal lives.
What Made an Impression?: Nobody’s Safe: Part of the fun of creature features like Beware Boiúna is the moralizing nature of the deaths, as the biggest jerks among the characters tend to end up in the most pieces by the end. But that rule doesn’t seem to apply here. Sure, there are clear villains, and plenty of them do fall down the belly of the beast. But so do plenty of the more honorable folks. I’ll let you know that the three most prominent characters are wide-eyed doctor Alli (Scream Queen veteran Jessica Rothe), dirtbag colonizer Brennan (Logan Marshall-Green), and wily river guide Lena (Kiana Madeira). In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I’ll allow my readers to speculate which of that cohort you think will survive. As for how effective this approach is, it can certainly be bone-chilling to know that there’s basically no escape from the terror, but this is a movie that I think would have benefited from some rhyme and/or reason to its dispatching.
What That Means?: Beware Boiúna opens with an epigraph that reads, “The forest makes good men great and bad men monsters.” I point this out not because it’s particularly profound. Sort of the opposite, really. The bad people’s monstrousness is quite clear from the get-go, and the good folks’ opportunities to be great are mostly stymied. So I guess I’m pointing this out because it’s rather silly.
Spread Your Wings: I was mainly excited to see this movie thanks to the presence of Jessica Rothe. Alas, BB is nowhere near the level of the Happy Death Day flicks, or even Boy Kills World. But my favorite moment nevertheless did involve Rothe, as Alli extracts some insects from one of her fellow doctors after eggs have been implanted in him. I thought this might be foreshadowing about some secondary monsters in addition to Boiúna, but instead, this scene is ultimately most memorable for the other doc quipping, “I would like to note there’s a butterfly growing in my back.” So that was kind of amusing.
Beware Boiúna is Recommended If You Like: Straight-to-Video Anaconda Knockoffs
Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Boiúnas
