Main cast: Alby Castro (Brujo), Julia Ruiz (Alma), Amelia Jackson-Gray (Crystal), Shannon Gayle (Summer) Giovanni Bejarano (Miguel), Isaac Wade (Martin), Stephen AF Day (The Conductor), Carolyn Meyer (Klara), Lola Forsberg (Lani), and Madeleine Falk (Nancy)
Director: Peter Mervis
Snakes on a Train is not to be confused with the movie Asylum is open about having deliberately ripped off from, Snakes on a Plane. This movie is the low budget ugly bastard sibling of the latter.
I was initially intrigued by the plot. We have a pair of lovers, Brujo and Alma, trying to find their way from Mexico to Los Angeles. You see, Alma is suffering from a Mayan curse for reasons best left unexplained here. Poisonous snakes are hatching and growing inside her body, slowly eating their way out from inside, and every now and then the poor pain-wracked woman would cough up a snake or two, the result of witch doctor Brujo’s constant attempts to ease her agony. With only hours left before Alma succumbs to her curse completely, these two board a train – illegally of course – headed to Los Angeles. In the next 16 hours or so, everything that can go wrong does, causing many, many snakes to be let loose on the train to attack the bunch of horror movie stereotypes on that train.
The movie quickly goes wrong. Brujo and Alma, initially speaking only in Spanish, even when confronted by someone who insisted that they speak English, suddenly start speaking in English once they board the train. Way too much time is spent on these passengers’ various subplots that ended up going nowhere once the snakes are loose and about. By the time I learn of the reason behind Alma’s curse, I’m beyond caring. The special effects are dreadful, the train looks like it’s been dredged up from the 1940s, and in the hilariously awful CGI-laden scene in the dramatic moment, the train morphs into one with a completely different look. And oh, that dramatic moment! It’s so stupid and over the top, it’s not even funny.
This one should have played it smart and outright parodied Snakes on a Plane for cheap laughs, but instead it tries to be a sober horror movie and fails dramatically and spectacularly in the process.
