In which the Ordo Malleus are reduced to cheap Mexican labour
Well, it had to happen eventually. You make one dodgy cult movie that turns out to be a minor hit. Common sense says it should stay there. It's done and dusted, no need to dredge up the concept again.
Common sense is in short supply at Asylum Productions however. Yes, the people who made Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus boring are back to wow us with their latest yawnfest, Snakes on a Train.
That's right, I said yawnfest. Because Snakes on a Train commits the cardinal sin of being fucking boring. It should have been 90 minutes of snakes tooling round a train biting people to death. Instead we got 80 minutes of stupid people being boring, and 10 minutes where the writers clearly put LSD directly onto their exposed brains.
Plot summary! A young mexican couple are sneaking over the border into America. Why? They're eloping from an arranged marriage for the girl. The girl's family responded to this with all the gravity and seriousness you'd expect-they laid a curse upon her. This curse apparently turns her insides into snakes. So, not a bad curse, but a little extreme for eloping.
The young dude in question is some kind of priest. Priest of what is never really explained-I just assumed some bullshit mayan/aztec/bullshit combo on account of the stone knife and the snakes. He needs to collect all the snakes she throws up, so his uncle, who is in LA and is extremely powerful, can restore her fully. So they sneak onto a train, meet the local dickheads who pass as people smugglers on this railroad, and meet the token nice guy refugee.
And now we spend about 20 minutes introducing the other passengers who should have been snake fodder. We have some engineer, a woman who is never actually explained and only exists for the engineer to hook up with. We have some surfer stoners (1 of whom is even more bored than the audience-he spends most of the movie asleep, the lucky bastard). We have the ticket man. Yep, that's his schtick. Some dude in a cowboy hat, some slimy looking fellow, 2 token "hot" young women and a small family round out the losers in this film.
So, to cut this really short-the family go to sleep. The stoners go to sleep. The engineer and the pointless woman eat brownies, the 2 younger women turn out to be smuggling drugs, the cowboy is pretending to be a cop to get the drugs, the slimy guy also wants the drugs, fun ensues.
Meanwhile, back with the snake woman, shes vomiting snakes everywhere and the local toughs decide they want the priest's weed. Only it isn't weed, it's part of his medicine. Totally. He fights them off, stabbing one of them in the throat in the process. The other two flee, breaking a jar full of snakes in the process. Priest man gathers the snakes up in an attempt to kill any chance of the movie living up to it's title, but one lone snake gets away.
The toughs catch their breath, thinking they've escaped with the medicine man's weed. Only, it's a box of small snakes. Who bite the dudes and worm their way up the guys arms. Hmmm. Odd. Turns out the snakes can pass on the curse to other people, who then produce their own snakes. One of the toughs fails to become a snake farm as the priest sticks his hands into his chest and rips his fucking heart out. The priest leaves the other guy to die being eaten form the inside by snakes.
Ok, cowboy dude pulls his "I'm totally a cop" act, nearly cons one of the young women into having sex with him instead of going to jail, and gets nabbed by the slimy dude. Who shoots him in the head. But poorly enough that the guy is still alive, and they engage in the worst shootout I've ever seen. Seriously, the A-Team had better shootouts than this. Anyhoo, one bullet smacks into a snake jar, and the switch just got flicked to "less boring".
Snakes ahoy! With the threat of snakes on a train, the priest kills the Conductor (who was smoking light bulbs to get high-the fuck?) and rips some wires out so the train wont stop. Carnage ensues as the tiny snakes turn into monstrous pythons and begin eating people. 2 of the stoners, the entire family (points for killing the little girl-didn't think it would happen) and the ticket guy go down as the cursed woman finally succumbs to the full effect of the curse. No, she doesn't turn into a mess of loose flesh. She turns into a daemon snake and eats her lover. With his dying words, the priest begs the nice guy refugee to have faith in anything. Then the daemon snake grows to a size that the movie Anacondas would shit themselves at seeing and eats the goddamned train. The survivors jump down a cliff and prepare to be eaten as well.
But wait! Refugee Man has an ace up his sleeve! He pulls out a holy symbol of some kind (i was bored and it was too small to easily see), and begins praying. A great light and a tornado appear, and then the dude hurls the daemon snake straight into the warp! Having disposed of this threat with a wave of his hand, he decides to walk to LA. Presumably he then goes report to his masters on Titan on the success of his mission, because holy shit that was impressive.
So yeah. 80 minutes of pointlessness ended by a guy hurling a daemon snake into the warp. Production values were typical Asylum shit-still shots followed by 2 seconds of shitty CGI then cut offscreen. The actors are your typical z grade losers-not a single talent among them. Essentially, all this movie does is prove that even a theoretically entertaining concept can be made duller than a butter knife.
Oh, and that catchy one line titles can be vastly more interesting than the meat of the story itself :p