There are two ways to see this film and rate it.

1: As a movie that turned out to be much worse than it intended to be. In which case it's obvious that an actor like Jon Voight would overact to try and make it look like it was intended to be "bad". The special f/x, intended or not, are done with computer animation and are, in that category, the worst i've seen yet. A snake that moves like a cartoon. If it was the movieproducers' intention to make a "bad" movie, they would have done better to use the old fashioned special f/x, with a rubber prop.

2:As a movie that was, indeed, intended to be a b-movie. However, since the director Luis Llosa previously only made "serious" action movies like "the Specialist" and "Sniper", i have to seriously doubt it was his intension to make a "tongue-in-cheek" movie. If it WAS his intention, he nearly succeeded in making a fun "bad" movie.

Personally, there were only two things in this movie i enjoyed: The voluptuous Jennifer Lopez, and the magnificently "bad" performance of Jon Voight, who with just the facial expressions brings a smile to your face.

Growing up in the 50's gave me the privilege of being one the last generations of filmgoers to enjoy the Saturday afternoon double-feature matinee experience at the neighborhood theatre. These double-features were primarily low budget sci-fi/horror epics with slender threads of plot, lovely damsels in distress (Beverly Garland, Barbara Rush), square-jawed heroes (Peter Graves, Richard Carlson) and budget monsters from Mars, the grave, melted icebergs, mad scientist's labs or atomic fallout. Well not really. The monsters were usually guys in rubber suits (Creature From The Black Lagoon, This Island Earth), or cheap trick photography (Tarantula, Attack of the 50 Ft Woman), or `Mask and Glove' illusions (I Was A Teenage Werewolf/Frankenstein, Monster On The Campus), or, if we were really lucky, a Ray Harryhausen stop motion creation.

Needless to say this wasn't great cinema, but what it WAS, was great fun. Were you scared? Not really. Did you have the need for everything to be fact-based and believable? Of course not! You went to be entertained, to let your imagination merge with the sounds and images and have a good time, laughing or screaming. Could anyone really take the monster from `It Conquered The World' seriously, or wonder whether `The Creature From The Black Lagoon' was biologically possible or if it could anatomically deflower Julie Adams? Didn't matter. Instead, you let yourself meld into the film's world and travel along for the ride.

Thus whether you were on the obviously and badly animated `Angry Red Planet', or trapped with James Best on the island of dogs in make-up which were trying to pass for `The Killer Shrews', you surrendered to the magic.

My heart weeps for the post `Star Wars' filmgoers, these people weaned on special effects, the MTVers and video viewers who've had their imaginations and attention spans kidnapped and are told what to see and how to interpret it. I truly am sorry. You people missed a modern day, Grade B double feature, sci-fi/horror classic called `Anaconda'. And we hadn't seen one this good since `Alien'.

Being an intelligent man, I realize the futility of convincing the non-believers who can't draw from the needed background reservoir to understand, so I won't bother preaching this film's virtues or try to win you over by fact and argument. This, however, is what I will say………

This is a brilliant re-creation of the lost art of the 1950's double-feature horror genre; not really a homage to, more the real thing. It's `Creature From The Black Lagoon', with a really cheesy computer animated snake in place of a guy in a really cheesy rubber suit. It's a Saturday afternoon classic for people who remember and understand them. Story is great, script is great, cinematography is great, direction is great, acting is great, the women beautiful and endangered, the heroes machismo and handsome, the monster phantasmagorical, and we get a bonus surprise by one of the greatest American actors, Jon Voight, doing a magnificent over-the-top, slimy, nasty, reprehensibly heartless villain, complete with a sly wink to the audience. His performance is the key to the film. He understood the film's intent and translated it to the screen for you. If it's in your realm of understanding and experience, you get it and are able to partake in this little slice of cinema heaven.

In 20 years, they'll be calling this a classic. I'm calling it one now.

While driving in a side road following a truck with her boyfriend Rob (Tad Hilgenbrink), there is a strange accident and Shelby (Laura Breckenridge) is abducted by a deranged driver. Tabitha (Katheryn Winnick) is kidnapped from her uncle's house by a man dressed of clown. Lisa (Jessica Lucas) is caught in an old pension by a twisted man. The three women are former school friends from Briar Hills and sooner they find themselves in an underground prison; further, they discover that the abductor is a former school mate that had psychological problems and is seeking revenge against them.

The plot of "Amusement" is so unreasonable (actually absurd) that irritates. The first segment (Shelby) is dumb with unexplained attitudes that do not make sense. For example, who is the girl in the truck; why she writes a note asking for help and jumps from the truck immediately after? Who would chase a truck with a dangerous kidnapper in the middle of nowhere leaving the girlfriend and a wounded girl behind on the secondary road? Why the truck driver runs over Rob? Why did he stop in a creepy house if he was close to the gas station? Tabitha's segment is the best and slightly inspired in the 1979 "When a Stranger Calls", but uses the bad clichés with the woman running from a backyard to a closed space and finding the body of the babysitter. Lisa's segment is also terrible, and who would sneak in a frightening place after the disappearance of her best friend Cat and her boyfriend Dan inside the house? The annoying and insane criminal is not developed and the viewer never knows how he got the isolated underground facility and why the psychiatrist of Briar Hills would visit a patient in a visibly abandoned spot. Last but not the least, the re-creation of the art boxes by the maniac is simply ridiculous. The good points of this flick are the cinematography and the acting, but that is not enough to save the story. My vote is four.