Snakes on a Train (2006)

Good movie but grossly overrated

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The cover illustration isn't a lie, in fact. In case you've never witnessed a movie in which an entire train (and not a small one, I may add) gets eaten by a preposterously humongous and pathetic looking CGI snake, here's your chance! Before you experience this, however, you'll have to struggle yourself through one of the most miserable and embarrassing pieces of trash ever made. There honestly aren't any words to describe how awful "Snakes on a Train" actually is. The script doesn't contain any coherence or logical development, the characters (as well as the actors and actresses depicting them) are pitiable morons and the special effects & action sequences are amateurish beyond comprehension. A female Mexican refugee and her lover illegally board a train from El Paso to Los Angeles. The woman has been cursed by her family, however, and she constantly barfs up thick green pea soup with little serpents in it. She needs to keep the serpents with her in order to survive, but some of them nevertheless slither away to the next carriages. Then, for some inexplicable reason, the little black snakes mutate into various species of enormous colorful snakes and begin to feast on the rest of the passengers. This is embarrassing, bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, quickly made to cash in on the unexpected huge success of "Snakes on a Plane", and I'm pretty sure the Mallachi Brothers improvised the script as they went along filming this nonsense. The handful of characters (100 passengers, my ass… More like 12 to 15) don't have a clue what they're doing or saying and one of them even mistakes a giant snake for an iguana. And it's boring. Don't ask me how a shoestring-budgeted film revolving on snakes in an isolated setting manages to be boring, but it is. The last couple of minutes are fun, but only if you're severely intoxicated.

...and by better, I mean that it is not complete garbage. Although extremely not plausible, "Snakes On A Train" is entertaining. This movie does, however, have some issues.First, as the movie opens and we are introduced to Alma and her beau, they are walking through the desert speaking to each other. The problem is, they are speaking to each other in Spanish. Would it have killed the good people at The Asylum to through up a few subtitles, or do they just take for granted that the dialogue in their films is typically meaningless, so why bother? Second problem with this movie is the directors' blatant disregard for plot holes. When Alma tries to initially stowaway on the train and only has pesos, it's pretty convenient that a childhood friend just happens to be on that exact train, in that exact car, at that exact time to pay her way in U.S. dollars. Question: How do the two Mexican guys get out of the cage unnoticed when Alma and her boyfriend are literally only a few feet away from them at all times? Another question: how does the blonde-haired, drug smuggling young lady NOT know she had been bitten by a snake? These characters would never been found at your local chapter of Mensa. They are stupid to the point of being special. You cringe when the electrical engineer asks "Do you know what time it is?" when he is very obviously wearing a watch that, if it were any larger, it would be Big Ben. Also, does it ever occur to Alma and her boyfriend that, because she is very sick from the curse, it would make more sense to simply call the Uncle living in L.A. and ask him to come to them instead of making a perilous trek across the country that would put at risk the lives of several other people? Just a final note to the two Directors and The Asylum: Was it absolutely necessary to cast the Middle Eastern Actor as the sinister looking passenger? The choice borders on cliché' and cultural insensitivity. And finally...IT IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA TO KILL A CHILD IN A MOVIE.

This is really a bad movie. Decent actors given no material to work with, decent camera-work, a premise that could have been fun, special effects of variable quality (the scenes of snakes entering people's bodies are quite well done), and direction with no sense of pace and no attempt at creating suspense add up to...nothing much.We open with a young Hispanic couple in the desert. The woman is ill, and vomits repeatedly: first disgorging green Jello, then snakes. They get on a train. The plot is in motion.We meet the various characters and wonder who will survive. Who will be the Last Girl? More importantly, how can the railroad stay in business running a train from El Paso to Los Angeles with a little over a dozen people aboard? There's a young Anglo couple with a daughter about six years old. We know that the parents are dead meat. It's an unpleasant surprise that after the parents are dispatched we see the screaming child eaten alive by a giant snake.Someone will piously state that bad things actually do happen to children in real life. Sure. But this isn't real life; it's a cheap exploitation movie cashing in on Samuel L. Jackson's big budget thriller, hoping that Blockbuster customers won't look too closely at the DVD box.The ending is ambitious, but these people didn't have the chops to pull it off. A giant snake slithers across the top of the train, gets ahead of it, and swallows it. Half a dozen characters jump from the train just before the last car is swallowed. Then a magic tornado comes and does something with the snake. Whatever. But it's gone, and the survivors begin walking to find civilization. Of course we see that one woman has a snakebite on her leg, and assume that the whole cycle will start over.I watched it on Chiller, so I didn't have a rental fee. If I had rented it, I'd have felt like I was robbed.Most of the dialog is just filler. After all, dialog scenes are cheaper to film than those that involve special effects.

There are spoilers but trust me, I'm doing you a favor.My friends and I like to watch crappy movies every so often. Inspired by Mystery Science Theater and our knack for on the spot jokes; We set out to find movies worth watching that are in fact...not worth watching. However trouble comes into paradise when these movies can only be found if you buy them. And I am a firm believer in not giving one cent to such a group of talentless scumbags. So, as another reviewer has said, films like this are a reason why downloading movies for free should be legalized. I prefer the idea of; instead of straight to VIDEO you have straight to INTERNET. That way the ass-bags who made this travesty won't ever turn a profit. Which unfortunately you know they do. They hire a bunch of actors who can't act, special effects from a high school classroom, rubber snakes you can get at the dollar store, constant vomiting of green jell-o, and the two main characters who seem to switch between being border jumping Mexicans who only speak Spanish, to Arabs to being 100% fluent in English, random nudity, a guy being shot like 10 times including one to the side of the head and living and the most retarded ending in the history of film, book, cave drawings and hustler magazine. The fact that I actually predicted that the jell-o puking snake girl would actually TRANSFORM into a snake about half way through terrifies me...Anyways, the movie is great to make fun of, but you have to make sure there's at least 4 of you and you're all spitting out jokes in rapid fire, because if there's even 1 second of watching this movie where you're not laughing your ass off, you will feel physically ill. I kid you not. My friends and I were eating chicken wings and now I can't even look at such a thing anymore without being reminded of this piece of Sh!t.This film is one above Alien Vs. Hunter which is by far the second worst movie ever made. And I've seen lots of bad movies. Incidentally, it's the same production company as this film and that bald guy is in both as well. just thought you might like to know that little fun fact. -100 out 0f 10.