The Amazon-set survival thriller from Wrong Turn director Mike P. Nelson hits US theatres on October 2, positioning it as this year's answer to Anaconda.
A giant snake movie is coming for horror season, and Lionsgate just dropped the last trailer before it lands in theatres. Beware Boiúna, directed by Mike P. Nelson, follows a team of doctors on a medical mission deep in the Amazon rainforest who discover, rather too late, that the jungle already has an occupant. And she does not appreciate visitors.
The film centres on Boiúna, described in the marketing as a "colossal ancient predator," a prehistoric snake that wakes up to reclaim her territory once the humans show up. The tagline does the heavy lifting here: in the jungle, nature holds absolute power, and Boiúna decides who lives and who dies. It's blunt, but it's horror marketing, it's supposed to be blunt.
Nelson isn't new to this genre. He's directed Summer School, The Domestics, the Wrong Turn reboot and the Silent Night, Deadly Night film, and he contributed a segment to V/H/S/85. The screenplay for Boiúna comes from three writers, Tony Giglio, Alan B. McElroy and Nelson himself, which usually means a project that's gone through a few rounds of studio notes before landing on the version audiences actually see.
The cast is where this one gets interesting for anyone tracking rising genre talent. Kiana Madeira, Jessica Rothe and Logan Marshall-Green lead the ensemble, three actors who've each carried their own scream-queen or scream-king moment lately. Rothe in particular has built a career on this kind of survival horror, and putting her opposite a giant snake feels almost inevitable at this point.
Anaconda comparisons, but scarier
FirstShowing.net's writeup leaned hard into the Anaconda comparison, and it's not an unfair one. Big reptile, remote jungle, a small group of people who really should have stayed home. But the outlet also flagged that early reviews for Boiúna are coming in positive, which is not always the case for this particular subgenre. Giant creature horror lives or dies on whether the tension actually lands or whether the CGI snake just looks silly on a big screen. If the reaction holds, Lionsgate might have a sleeper hit on its hands rather than a straight-to-streaming punchline.
Produced by Jeremy Bolt and Robert Kulzer, the film is being pushed as a theatrical horror-season release rather than a quiet drop, which says something about the studio's confidence in it. Lionsgate has had mixed luck with mid-budget horror this year, so a title that's actually testing well matters.
Beware Boiúna releases in US theatres on October 2, 2026. Whether it gets a wide Indian theatrical run or turns up on a streaming platform here later is still an open question, one that usually gets answered only after the opening weekend numbers come in from back home.
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