Reviews
‘Piranhaconda’ Is One of the Best SyFy Original Creature Features
I was introduced to horror at a young age. My aunt had shown me the Universal Monster movies before I was 10. Some of my fondest memories were watching Arsenic and Old Lace or Abbott and Costello meet the (fill in the blank) at a restaurant in Hawley, PA called Mugs. But out of all the horror (and comedy-adjacent horror) I watched as a child, my favorite type of films to watch were the then SciFi Originals (and eventually SyFy Originals). From awful Pumpkinhead sequels to Sharknado, I tuned into these films with my mom nearly every Saturday. To my shock, one of these SciFi Originals completely slipped by without my knowledge…Piranhaconda.
And yes, I know that this is technically a SyFy Original. It will always be SciFi to me, dammit! OH, also, to make sure I don’t drive anyone too crazy, we’ll refer to SciFi Originals as SFOs from here on out.
Why SciFi Originals Get a Bad Rap
Throughout my life, I’ve been laughed at by “serious” film watchers for my love of SFOs. It’s easy to write these films off. Z-list stars, shoddy effects, and gratuitous soft-core nudity aren’t for everyone. I would be the first to agree that many of these films have more cons than pros. Within each of these films lies a deep passion for storytelling and adventure, no matter how badly written the story may be. Every once and a while, though, the stars aligned for SciFi.
Lovegrove (Michael Madsen) is on the ultimate mission to find the creature that killed his father years ago. Rose (Terri Ivens) is a script supervisor who is trying to keep Milo (Chris De Christopher) on track for the filming of Head Chopper 3. Pike (Michael Swan) is a mercenary hellbent on kidnapping the cast of Head Chopper (or something like that) for ransom. And, unfortunately for them, Piranhaconda is set on killing them all.
How Piranhaconda Became a Standout SFO Creature Feature
Piranhaconda is one of the few SciFi animal mashups that I didn’t have the opportunity to see when it aired (and reaired). For some reason, SciFi pumped tons of energy (time and money) into these Corman-esque (and produced!) features. I’m not sure where the turning point was for the channel to switch from attempting rebooted sequels (like Pumpkinhead) to films like Megasomething Vs Giantsomething. All I know is, I’m not complaining. After finally watching Piranhaconda, all I can wonder is how they managed to get this one right.
Chopping Mall’s Jim Wynorski was no stranger to these animal amalgam features. His work post-2000 was full of direct-to-video flicks that were easily lost to the passage of time. I’ve seen quite a few of his animal-based pictures, but none were as tight and entertaining as Piranhaconda. To boot, Michael Madsen was no stranger to these types of pictures. So, how did this film get the formula right?
A Surprisingly Cohesive Story for a Creature Mashup
The film starts off on shaky ground by introducing three sets of characters (four if you count the flower researchers, who immediately die). It’s a worrying thing and left me wondering just how anyone could reel in this off-the-rails mess. But, to my complete surprise, they do. Except for the flower researchers, every single story beat gets resolved in a way that feels complete and interesting. Even if some of those beats get resolved by a red, misty death of a piranhaconda.
Of course, the film is fraught with continuity errors and awful muzzle flash plug-ins. That’s to be expected. What was unexpected was just how decent the piranhaconda looks. Like how the sharks look in Sharknado (the first and NONE of the others), the piranhaconda looks pretty damn solid. Some of the creature shots really show the film’s budget, but for an SFO, I was shocked by how good it looked. The biggest issue with the snake-fish is its kills. It does become quite bland when the creature kills its nth person, and they simply dissolve into a red mist. Predictability and sameness are a huge thorn in the side of films like this. If you can’t keep cable TV viewers on their toes, what reason do they have to come back after the next commercial break?
Shockingly Solid Performances for a SyFy Original
With any low/micro-budget film, you need to be on your toes (as a director) with the acting. Audiences simply won’t continue to watch a film when its acting is atrocious–something that many SFOs fail at. This may sound hyperbolic, but Piranhaconda is Michael Madsen at his best SINCE his Kill Bill work with Tarantino. Sure, he does a metric ton of hat acting (hatcting?) that he would inherit from Kill Bill, but it’s not as distracting as it would become throughout his career. And the aged porn stars even excel in the majority of their scenes. Piranhaconda may just be one of the most well-acted SFOs to date. Though with films like Sharknado 2 and on, Ian Ziering and Tara Reid wouldn’t set that bar too high.
If you’ve ever had a fleeting thought to check out an SFO, you can’t really go wrong with Piranhaconda. It hits all of the beats of an SFO but still finds a way to separate itself from the mold. Out of the animal amalgam films, Piranhaconda feels different enough to have its own footing in the oeuvre of SFO quick flicks. Give it a shot, and succumb to slithery, quick-swimming terror that is the Piranhaconda.
This month on Horror Press, we’re discussing international horror. What jumped to mind immediately for me was a witchy classic that is one of my biggest blind spots. That would be the Swedish docudrama Häxan, also known in English as Witchcraft Through the Ages. Benjamin Christensen’s wildly controversial filmic essay is notorious among horror fans, and it’s been on my watchlist forever. I’ve had ample time to watch this movie, considering it debuted more than seven decades before I was born. So I’m at last correcting a major oversight. Happy Halloween season, y’all!
Does Häxan Play Well in 2026?
Even though I knew the basics of what Häxan was and where it came from, it still surprised me. Although its thesis is mostly a foundation upon which to build phantasmagorical images, Häxan very much believes in that thesis. And it has honestly aged pretty damn well. Other than the use of the word “hysteria” to describe predominantly female mental illness. But for that to be the part that’s aged worse in a movie that’s more than a century old? Not too shabby. Beyond that, it’s essentially an early feminist text. It retells witch mythology mostly to draw a direct parallel between medieval superstition and 1920s mental illness stigma. You could turn its points into a Halloween-themed BlueSky mental health thread, and you’d barely have to change the language.
Unfortunately, due to its nature as a silent film, the majority of this message is delivered via intertitles. A lot of the time, it feels like you’re literally just sitting there reading an essay. Although I believe classic cinema shouldn’t be tampered with, I get why the 1968 re-release added William S. Burroughs narration. That’s where Häxan has aged the worst. White text on a black screen is not the reason I go to the movies. The more text-heavy portions can start to feel really dry. However…
Häxan Is a Fascinating and Bone-Chilling Object
First of all, I don’t mean to flat-out dismiss the essay portions of the film. They largely present interesting, well-researched information. And I really dug how it becomes more and more clear that Benjamin Christensen himself is the one writing the intertitles. His personality and the personalities of his actors become part of the story he’s telling. This helps Häxan feel more personal and easy to connect to, even across oceans of time.
Then there are the witchcraft recreations, which are for sure the main reason anybody throws this movie on these days. They’re right to do so, because those recreations are freaking phenomenal. Christensen & Co. use every tool in the early filmmaker’s arsenal to bring a series of truly macabre visions to life. All manner of demons and monsters parade across the screen, in a flurry that rivals any modern frightfest. There’s some impeccable makeup that feels handmade but nevertheless wholly organic in an appropriately surreal way. There’s also some reverse footage and stop-motion used to create effects that would bring a tear to Georges Méliès’ eye. It’s an endlessly creative, wholly committed romp of demonic pleasures. Even the horror scenes that don’t involve demons tend to work. I’m particularly fond of a hypnotized, knife-wielding nun who wouldn’t be out of place on a 1970s grindhouse screen.
Should You Give It a Watch?
Even though the movie is tame in terms of gore and violence, what they do show still feels genuinely shocking. While this is pure exploitation mayhem, this material also serves to underline the thesis. It plunges audiences into the lurid, heady world of witchcraft. In its operatic way, it evokes the headspace of the people who were so afraid of it, explaining their fears. While Häxan isn’t perfect, it’s a miracle it existed when it did, and it’s still well worth a watch today.
Of all the horror movies to be described as a runaway train, Rob Savage’s Other Mommy is the first in recent memory to have that quality as a negative. A more focused piece of over-the-top supernatural horror would capitalize on starting at a high speed and just gunning it. It would get increasingly faster, more horrific with its effects and reveals, more stunning and spectacle-filled. But Other Mommy never utilizes the momentum it starts with. It stays at the same steady, uncomfortable pace. And it gets old, very fast.
Other Mommy Is Missing a First Act
The movie begins in what should have been the second act; it never does stop haunting the narrative that Other Mommy feels like it’s missing 30 minutes of setup and 10 minutes of breathing room that would actually get you to care about what’s happening. Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) is a young girl already well acquainted with a creature known as Other Mommy. A supernatural being that can change shape and size to her liking, becoming anyone she wants and then some. The entity only desires one thing: for Bela to let it into her heart and give it a new body.
Bela’s parents, Ursula (played by Jessica Chastain, in a dual role as the Other Mommy) and Russell (Jay Duplass), become aware of the space-bending creature in the film’s very first scenes. Soon, they’re on the run from the creature that’s trying to tear the already strained family apart. But the overwrought family drama of an unfaithful mother and a scatterbrained father forced to hide their struggling marriage from their kid is smothered. Much like Chastain’s performance, it’s drowned out by a barrage of aggressive and unimpressive digital effects trying to milk every single moment for a fright, desperate to keep audiences’ attention.
A Clumsy Digital Effects Showcase That Smothers the Story to Death
Other Mommy is primarily concerned with showing off its titular monster and her reality-bending powers, jumping from one “scare filled”, dreamlike sequence to the next; heavy, heavy quotes on scare filled. You become inured to every trick the film has as it shows you all the most unimaginative uses of a shapeshifting, size changing monster possible. There is no clever framing or use of shadow to obscure it, no restraint at all really. The directing is frenetic and clumsy, but it makes sure to make the monster as clear as possible. It’s all out in the open, plain to see, and bizarrely mundane for a depiction of a demonic interloper.
Every jumpscare-a-minute scene moves too fast and is too overlit to ever scare. The bright and inappropriate atmosphere fails the already rough looking digital effects. What it amounts to is a choppily edited and disjointed assortment of scenes, with weak imitations of Trevor Henderson style abominations center stage. Tall and small and melty variations of a CGI Chastain, none of them work to evoke tension or fear or any emotion other than the occasional eyebrow raise for how goofy some of them look.
There are a few moments where Chastain teases at playing the monster effectively without face and body morphing effects, sporting a genuinely disturbing countenance and creepy voice. But as soon as these fragments of interest come, they’re washed away by warping her into a lanky, slinking monster of ridiculous proportions. What we get out of the dual role is a boring creature for the feature, and a dry, one-dimensional protagonist, both squandering the phenomenal actor Chastain is.
Other Mommy is Full of Dull Performances and Squandered Potential
Duplass offers little with his supporting role, providing flat dialogue and flatter comic relief as a middling SNL sketch’s idea of a clownish father. It’s worth noting Clark actually provides the most interesting performance among the entire cast, a feat impressive from such a young child actor. But even her endearing and heart-breaking time as Bela is too little and too shadowed by the faulty composition of the film it’s trapped in.
The trailer for Other Mommy may have caught audiences off guard at the cinema in the past few months. But ultimately, that trailer showed the movie’s entire hand. Other Mommy is a pasty, crooked collage of elements from the supernatural horror movies producer James Wan made the backbone of the genre a decade ago. That doesn’t make it a throwback; just a rehash of cliches, with no structure and no sense of cohesion. It never amounts to anything more interesting than what the marketing material showed, which is a tragic end for a film, if there ever was one.
