When I heard of Beau Yotty's (writer, director, and co-star of this) creature feature horror film Snake Resort, I had a pretty good idea in my head of what it would be like. The press release describing a 'genetically enhanced snake' made me think of a gigantic CG monstrosity. It was a pleasure to discover the opposite was true, a movie villain whose small stature didn't get in the way of making it appear threatening. Stated to be made in the style of 80s creature features, watching this I could also see a huge chunk of 80s slashers in the genetics of the movie.
Out in remote Arizona, a crazed scientist (Jeff Serdy as Dr. Cross) has been working on a controversial anti-venom. He believes this will make him world famous once it has been perfected. Part of his research has included him genetically enhancing a rattlesnake, to make it into far more deadly a predator. Not taking the best precautions; the scientist is attacked and the snake escapes. With a sole desire to kill, the creature makes the 20 mile trip to the nearest settlement - a remote RV park, home to a small community of people. One by one, they begin to get picked off, with the survivors needing to come up with a way to defeat the murderous snake.
Snake Resort is very indie in style. There was never an issue hearing the dialogue being spoken, but occasionally there would be abrupt silences or background interference. Also with the dialogue, at times the lines sounded a bit too wordy, I couldn't quite put my finger on it but it did feel sometimes the script could have been tightened up a bit. This led to scenes that seemed to go on a bit too long. One early example was a painfully long introduction of a drifter (Frank Haraksin) arriving in town. Sometimes the scenes felt overlong for no real reason. This includes the slightly too long intro credit sequence, and the bunch of epilogues placed on top of each other at the film's conclusion. Looking past all that and there are more positive aspects that had me quite enjoying the movie.
The acting wasn't terrible, I came to like many of the eccentric characters, even if they never particularly stood out from each other. Highlight was the weird exterminator; Nate (Jim Perry), but in general, with not a gigantic cast, each character played their roles to an acceptable standard, whether it was purely existing to be a victim of the snake, or being one of the more slasher-based joint protagonists, such as Brett (Yotty) or diner worker Stephanie (Katrina F Kelly).
It was refreshing to see the snake here was actually a normal snake. Not tiny but not particularly large, this snake impressed by stealing a few moves from slasher classics. It has the Jason Vorhees type skill of being able to teleport around off-screen. One moment it will be inside someone's trailer home attacking them, the next moment, outside in a field somewhere, and then wherever it is deemed it needs to be next. It also does a great job of sneaking up on people, despite its loud rattling noise, characters just are not aware of it until its far too late. There were a large amount of kill scenes, but they all played out mostly the same. The snake will be shown on screen lunging towards the camera, and then you get an exaggerated death scene as the victim will dramatically fall to the ground dead. The reliance on practical effects worked so much better than the alternative. Recently I saw Coyotes; a creature feature about a pack of coyotes, whose main complaint I had were the animals being obviously fake. Here, despite snakes rarely ever appearing on screen with the characters, it felt more real and believable. Characters are killed in a variety of locations, with the snake able to near enough instantly kill with a single bite, meaning there isn't a need for much special effects, but the scenes sell themselves well.
Snake Resort entertained me due to how closely it followed the conventions of the slasher genre, the pint sized villain made for something more unique, eschewing the trope of having it be gigantic, or having dozens of the things. Even at around an hour and a half this did feel slow in places, especially with long over lingering shots of scenery, and word heavy dialogue. I did like the vibe with this very indie horror though, and for that it gets praise.
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