A healer sprayed a fragrant liquid into Mike P. Nelson’s hair, tapped him with corn husks, and told him to be the father of his crew. That is how filming on Beware Boiúna started, deep in the Amazon near Leticia, Colombia.
We caught an advance screening of Beware Boiúna, which hits theatres on October 2, and we liked it more than we expected. It is the creature feature movie of the year so far!
Beware Boiúna (2026)
Directed by Mike P. Nelson · 104 min · R
Beware Boiúna drops a group of doctors into the Amazon, right where an ancient giant snake has decided she's done sharing her home. Mike P. Nelson directs Kiana Madeira, Jessica Rothe, and Logan Marshall-Green in a creature feature rooted in local folklore and shot on location in Colombia, with real explosions, real stunts, and nobody guaranteed to make it out.
Then we got something even better: a second sit-down with the director, Mike P. Nelson himself (for the second time). He came into our chat after talking to “over seventy different people” in about a week, so he was, in his words, “very warmed up.” And don’t worry, this whole conversation is spoiler-free; our full review episode is coming soon.
Why the Beware Boiúna Posters Swallowed Moo Deng and Jimothy
We had to start with the marketing. When the first promo material dropped, it showed Boiúna swallowing the internet’s favourite viral animals, Moo Deng and Jimothy included. Arthur found it “absolutely hilarious“. So naturally, we asked Mike if he got any angry DMs about it.
He didn’t. Most people took it as the joke it was meant to be. The way Mike described it stuck with us. The marketing is tonally very different from the movie, and he called it a kind of misdirect.
Yes, you are going to have some fun, but what kind of fun?
He said.
Is it also gonna be a little mean?
The answer is yes. “We’re not gonna spare cute little animals,” Mike told us. Meaghan pointed out that it almost works as foreshadowing for the film, and Mike agreed right away.
Is Boiúna a Jungle Protector or Just a Hungry Snake?
The movie opens with an illegal gold mining operation and a burst of violence, and from there, the snake does not care who she eats. Healer, poacher, anyone in between. So Arthur asked the big question: is Boiúna the environment’s immune system, or is she just hungry?
Mike wants you to decide that for yourself. It was never his job to tell you Boiúna is a magical creature fighting for the forest, but those ideas are in there on purpose. Folklore has always used storytelling to say there is a protector in the jungle, and the film leans into that.
Personally? He likes the idea that a creature like Boiúna (or Titanoboa, for that matter) has been around for millions of years and knows more than we do.
If this has been her home for that long, then, yeah, she’s not gonna let people mess around.
He said. Then he added the other side:
It’s a giant snake and they’re hungry.
That tension is exactly where he finds the fun. One character can believe she’s a god; another can insist she’s just a hungry animal trying to survive. Mike loves movies that start those conversations, and we think it shows.
Meaghan said it best: you never know who’s safe. We saw that play out multiple times, and halfway through, something happens that made Arthur go:
Wait a minute. This is a different movie now.
We won’t say what, so you will have to find out when you watch the movie.
How Sorcerer and Titanoboa Shaped Beware Boiúna
Here’s something we didn’t expect. Mike originally turned this movie down.
The idea of a giant snake story came from producers Robert Kulzer and Jeremy Bolt, along with Tony Giglio. When they approached Mike, he said no.
There is a lot of stigma behind giant snake movies.
He told us, and he knew it would be an uphill battle where he could never make everybody happy. So they asked him what he would do instead, and that question is where this version of the story was born.
As the team researched, they found the Boiúna folklore from the region and connected it to Titanoboa, the real prehistoric snake discovered in Colombia. Mike got excited about how those two worlds could merge.
His biggest comp wasn’t even a creature feature. It was William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, one of his favourite movies. He loves how it plays like one movie at the beginning and a completely different movie at the end.
You meet the characters, you see the civil unrest around them, and then suddenly the rest of the film is a group of guys hauling nitroglycerin through the jungle where one wrong move kills them. “That’s the movie,” Mike said.
Except for explosives, it’s a giant snake. And except for people on the lam, it’s a bunch of really good doctors.
He also studied the masters of monster suspense: Alien, Jurassic Park, Jaws, and Tremors. He wanted to learn how they built dread by holding back the creature. His goal was simple and a little bold.
Could I make a giant snake movie that actually feels scary and has some level of dread to it? Because I can’t say that I’ve seen one before that does that.
The gold mining in that opening scene is not made up, either. Mike said it’s happening right now, and while researching, he saw newsreel footage of Indigenous people and tribes standing up and fighting back.
When he went down to talk to locals who had witnessed it, some told him they never thought someone would come and tell this story through film. What excited them even more was that it would be a genre movie built around a creature from their own folklore.
Filming Beware Boiúna in the Amazon: A Healer’s Blessing and a Flood
To shoot on that land near Leticia, the production had to ask permission. Mike was all for it.
I wanna go in. I wanna be respectful.
He said. Once the team explained the story and what they were trying to say, the community said yes.
Then came the ceremony. The crew drank chicha (a fermented corn mash with pineapple), and an elder healer gave everyone on the crew their roles. For Mike, that meant the fragrant liquid in his hair, the corn husks, and hands placed on him. The message was clear:
You are to be the father of your team and these are your children. Do right by them.
Mike’s reaction? “Jesus. Okay, yep, you got it.“
He told us everyone left that day with a refreshing feeling that they were all in this together, locals included.
I’ll never forget that day.
He said. Meaghan called it a “cool, immersive way to kick things off,” and we agreed.
When Arthur asked if he felt the weight of that responsibility, Mike didn’t hesitate. “You hold to it.” He believes they were blessed, and that the jungle was on their side, because “jungle don’t care.” They still had challenges, of course. Mike thinks of what Werner Herzog went through, or what the crew of Sorcerer faced shooting in the jungle, and knew going in that things would happen.
One of those things was a flood. The gold mining siege at the start of the film was supposed to be shot from the other side, on land, with a nice backlight. Then it rained. A lot. The whole area flooded, the sun ended up blaring in everyone’s faces, and they had to shoot the scene from a new angle. Looking at the sequence now, Mike says he can’t imagine it any other way.
His best memory from the shoot? Filming on their boat, the Hermes, while it moved down the Amazon River with the actors on board.
I can’t believe we’re doing this right now.
He remembers thinking.
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Practical Effects, Kiana Madeira, and Real Tension on Set
Mike’s rule was simple: if there’s a VFX snake in the movie, there has to be something real alongside it. So when a stuntman gets yanked 40 feet into the air in the middle of the jungle, that was a real stunt team, real ropes, and real foliage blasting out, all shot in camera with the actors right there. No digital double.
The lumber camp structure collapsing? They set off TNT while the leads ran down the ramp, so the boom they react to was an honest, earth-rattling explosion. When a character gets chomped by the snake, they blew up the floor with explosives.
Anything that we could do physically to make it feel real and reactive to everybody on set, we did it.
Mike said.
Did it safely, but we did it.
Meaghan wanted to shout out Kiana Madeira as Lena, partly because she loves highlighting Canadian women and partly because Lena is a mess for a big chunk of the film. Wet, muddy, covered in viscera. Mike called her “such a trooper.”
Off camera she’s soft-spoken and sweet; then she switches on an intense, don’t-mess-with-me energy and switches it right back off. “I have no idea how you even do that,” Mike admitted.
That led us to ad-libs. Mike isn’t precious about the script unless a line is important to the plot, and he likes to let his actors play.
The more you allow them to play, the more it surprises you.
He said.
If it’s surprising me, it’s going to surprise more people as well.
His favourite example involves Logan Marshall-Green and Jessica Rothe in a heated scene at the bar. Logan found ways to push buttons that weren’t getting pushed, and it started to get under Jessica’s skin. The set went quiet.
Everyone wondered if things were okay. After the take, Logan went up to her and asked, “Are you good? Are you good?” According to Mike, Jessica will tell you she was starting to get genuinely annoyed, but she knew what he was doing and decided to channel it. “Dude, actors, man,” Mike said.
Boiúna vs. King Kong and Our Fill-in-the-Blank Game
Time for the fun stuff. Arthur asked which movie monster Boiúna would beat easily and which would give her trouble.
Mike had just talked with Eric Vespe on The Kingcast, so his first pick came from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: Shardik, the giant cyborg bear. That one could be evenly matched, maybe even in the bear’s favour.
What, like a Terminator bear? I mean, come on.
If Shardik got his claws into her face, she’d be in trouble (though parts of him might stop working, too).
His dream matchup, though, is the original 1933 King Kong. Mike grew up with it, and it’s one of the reasons he made this film. Kong fights a snake-like creature in a cave in that movie, and Mike thinks:
Our snake is bigger.
Meaghan pointed out that if Boiúna got wrapped around Kong’s neck, things could get tricky. Arthur’s verdict: “Let’s bring those IPs together.”
Then we played our fill-in-the-blank game, which Mike, a self-described “classic overthinker,” called “the worst” for him. He did great anyway.
- “You’ll never survive the Amazon if you…” eat a poison dart frog. One actually landed on a cast member’s chair across from Kiana in the tent, and the animal wrangler had to come take it away.
- “Every creature feature needs at least one…” character who doesn’t deserve to die.
- “Watch Beware Boiúna for the…” intensity of the jungle.
- “If Boiúna got me, my last words would be…” a goodbye to his wife and son. Arthur called the prompt “so dark,” and Meaghan called the answer “a sad but very real statement.“
Somehow, we end up in a dark place every time we talk to Mike. We don’t mind. As Meaghan put it at the end, Beware Boiúna works because it’s a fun creature feature with a relevant message baked in.
A lot of people will walk in expecting a giant snake movie, and they’ll get one (there’s plenty of snake). They’ll just walk out with something a little deeper too.