Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Anaconda:
Meg 2: The Trench
With a floundering script and painstakingly uninventive cast, Ben Wheatley falls victim to this behemoth shark franchise. Meg 2: The Trench capitalizes on very few aspects that made the first movie an occasionally enjoyable romp.
Ghosts of Mars
Ghosts of Mars is late-period John Carpenter playing his hits at full volume. The craft is not lazy. The premise is too wild, the red-dusted sets too vivid, and the action too outsized to come from a filmmaker on autopilot. It just happens to be one of those odd Carpenter joints that feels like a mash of better Carpenter movies, then gets stranded in the thin air of its own sci-fi pulp.
Jurassic World Rebirth
“A new era is born.” is the promise, but Jurassic World Rebirth mostly confirms that this franchise is long past rebirth. Three years after Jurassic World Dominion and decades after the singular magic of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, Gareth Edwards steps in with a clean slate and a prestige cast, yet the result is another groaning carousel of CG set pieces that never find awe or fear. It is especially frustrating because Edwards has proved he can revitalize legacy IP with scale and tact. Godzilla (2014) remains the best American take on the kaiju, Rogue One is the standout of the Disney Star Wars era, and even The Creator made striking worldbuilding on a smaller budget. Here, the spectacle looks expensive but rarely convincing, and the tension never lands.
A Quiet Place: Day One
Michael Sarnoski sits in the director’s chair for A Quiet Place: Day One and delivers a movie that often feels like an A Quiet Place movie and a Michael Sarnoski film – just not at the same time. The softer moments between Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn are great, but often feel out of place in this larger world.
Predator: Badlands
Predator: Badlands is a baffling turn for Dan Trachtenberg after the clean thrills of Prey and the surprise bite of the animated Predator: Killer of Killers. Coming off those entries in his Predator reboot, I expected craft, tension, and clever constraint. What arrives is scale without spectacle, a loud, CG smeared detour that forgets why this series works.
Venom: The Last Dance
It’s unfortunate to say, but Venom: The Last Dance, the concluding chapter of Sony’s Venom trilogy, feels like a misstep. Stripped of much of the charm and irreverence that made its predecessors enjoyable, this installment doubles down on dense exposition and formulaic storytelling, leaving little of the fun that defined the series’ earlier outings.
Twisters
Twisters is a remarkable victory for theaters, summer blockbusters, and movie stars. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell are certified mainstays in the industry after their recent successes, and Lee Isaac Chung remains one of the latest risers in a young camp of talented filmmakers.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
Rise of the Beasts is better than nearly any Transformers film, or perhaps it’s just better at not being a noticeably abysmal movie. To blubber a plot synopsis of any of the Transformers movies seems like a task done only by the deranged. They draw you so far into the weeds that it’s hard to keep your bearings while you watch them (Who’s the villain this time? How’s that different from the last?). But regardless, they keep chugging along.
The Beekeeper
While David Ayer‘s The Beekeeper is a lot of fun and has some surprisingly effective and exhilarating action sequences that are decked out with every possible way you could break a bone or die, it’s still too odd and ill-conceived to be taken seriously. And for that reason, it’s a perfect Dumpuary movie. Jason Statham stars a rogue special forces agent.
65
Despite Adam Driver‘s attempt to deliver cinema’s next best science fiction thriller movie, 65 doesn’t successfully convey much that feels new or enticing. Lackluster pacing and storytelling make up a generally bland film stripped of any exciting elements.
READ MORE: Anaconda (2025)
