More than a decade before Mike P. Nelson made Beware Boiuna, his new horror film about a colossal snake defending her home, he saw proof of just how true to life his beast perhaps once was.
“Back in 2009, these scientists actually found [a fossil of] a snake called the Titanoboa,” he told SYFY Wire, noting the discovery took place in a coal mine in La Guajira, Colombia. “They found a piece of vertebrae. Just to give you an example, a really large anaconda vertebrae is like a golf ball size. The vertebrae of this snake? Softball size. So, you can imagine how ginormous this thing is.”
The idea of a massive, prehistoric snake wreaking havoc on modern times helped inspire Nelson’s film—as did the Brazilian myth of Boiúna, a mighty, shape-shifting Amazonian serpent.
“Is there something mystical about this creature, or is it just a creature who has survived all these millions of years and is still hiding out there?” he posited. “That was a fun playground to play in.”
In Beware Boiúna, a team of doctors’ humanitarian mission in the Amazon rainforest gets dramatically derailed, their new path sending them—and those on their heels—right into Boiúna’s fiercely protected domain.
As the film’s arbiter of life and death, Boiúna has a lot of choices to make—and she’s decisive.
“Not mincing words here: one of the things going into this movie that I talked with [our writer and producers about] creatively was, the jungle doesn’t give a f–k,” Nelson said. “It doesn’t matter who you are as a character, as a person. Going into that environment, it’s there to survive as well. So, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, it might be your end. Ultimately, the jungle is an amazing place. It’s a beautiful place. But also, it’s unforgiving.”
Happy Death Day’s Jessica Rothe, who portrays medical student Alli, describes Boiúna as “chaos” and “inevitability.”
“She is death that is coming for us all one day, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it,” she said. “If you’re a good person, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to survive. If you’re a bad person, it doesn’t mean you’re going to die. That unpredictability gives such stakes to this film.”
“I just love all of the choices that our amazing director Mike P. Nelson made in the development of the script,” Rothe added, “because I think it’s one of the things that will keep audiences guessing and on their toes, and also rooting for our characters and breaking their hearts. I think that it’s a really fun rollercoaster ride to be on.”
Kiana Madeira (Fear Street)—who stars as Lena, the Colombian-Brazilian deckhand who works on the doctors’ boat—experienced that rollercoaster ride firsthand.
“Even reading the script for the first time, I was gasping,” she shared. “I was like, ‘They did not!’ As an audience member watching it, I hope they feel the same way. It’s ruthless. The jungle is ruthless. Like Jess said, it can come for anyone. It’s one of my favorite things about this film.”
Beware Boiuna was shot on location in the jungles of Colombia, which Rothe called “such a gift.”
“It made our performances so grounded and real,” she explained. “On a sound stage, we probably eventually would’ve gotten there, but it would’ve been a journey. We were sweating. We were covered in bugs. We were covered in dirt. So, we were getting to experience exactly what our characters would be getting to experience, which was incredible.”
“On top of that, the rainforest is just so beautiful,” Rothe added. “It’s beautiful and magnificent and also kind of terrifying and mysterious—all things that our wonderful creature in this movie, Boiúna, is. So, we were just surrounded 24/7 by the vibe of this film, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
For the cast, filming in the Amazon was just as unpredictable as the snake herself.
“There was one day where we had to stop filming because it was raining so hard,” Madeira said. “Literally, the bridge that we took to get into set was flooded over, and we had to wait in our trailers and sleep for hours, and then rush out in the bed of pickup trucks.”
The rain also poured while Madeira was filming her memorable quicksand scene, but the elements only heightened her experience.
“There’s this photo of me—it started to trickle rain, and I was just in there with the umbrella with this huge smile on my face,” she gushed, “because when else am I ever going to get the opportunity to do that?”
Beware Boiúna is out in theaters Oct. 2.
