Snakehead Terror (2004 TV Movie) User Reviews

Where is MST3000 when you need it?

[klchu · 3/10 · 8 December 2004]

The gang at MST3K would have had a field day with this movie. It has it all: bad plot, bad directing, bad effects, bad acting, and famous faces. With Bruce Boxleitner, William B. Davis and Carol Alt, the number of Scarecrow and Mrs. King, X-Files and supermodel jokes are endless (not to mention Babylon 5 and Tron). To be fair to Boxleitner, his acting was fine, but the number of long, drawn out scenes of him driving up and parking his car are worthy of ridicule, MST-style.

As has been noted, this movie rips off every other "animal attacks" movie ever made. Every cliché is here:

• Mutant "man made" monster: check

• Local sheriff: check

• Sheriff's child in peril: check

• Unconcerned politician: check

• New love interest partner: check

• Goofy teenagers: check

• Slow attacks that escalate without reason: check

• Illogical and downright stupid behavior of every human: check

• Dumb monsters that show intelligence for plot reasons: check

• Improbably, yet highly effective single solution: check

Actually there was one cliché that I either missed, or they just didn't do, but that's the "the end?" ending where something survived. Maybe I just stopped watching too soon.

I was rooting for the fish

[TheMovieMark · 3/10 · 1 September 2006]

Nothing trumpets a movie's irrelevance louder than the inability to remember anything about it a mere few weeks after watching it. Seriously, when I started to review this I had to stop and recall whether or not I'd actually watched it yet. I thought I had, but I couldn't remember a thing about it. I finally found my notes and after reading through them all the craptitude came flooding back. I wish I had just kept those memories hidden in the recesses of my mind. Kind of like the "gym teacher incident" of '88.

This actually isn't as putrid as you might expect. But please don't take that statement as an endorsement of any kind. It's just one of those generic, low-budget movies that manages to avoid being horrible but is just too mediocre to be any fun.

There are a few moments of unintentional hilarity though. You gotta love when a teenager gets killed and his friends immediately vow revenge on the sea creature that introduced their buddy to his demise. Within a couple of minutes they're laughing and bumping fists as they set out to "even the score." Good job of completing bypassing the mourning period, guys! I'm sure y'all will have no problem defeating some creature (on his own territory, no less) that has the capability of killing humans.

Note to my friends: if you're ever killed by a shark or something then I hope you'll understand if I don't dive in the water and attempt to take the thing on by myself. I'll have to defer to the proper authorities in that case. Nothing personal.

I think my favorite part is when the teenagers are in a boat and one of the girls shoots at a snakehead fish but she shoots the engine of another boat instead, causing an explosion that kills one of her friends.

The remaining friends vowed revenge on her, laughed, and bumped fists. Or not.

Oh, and Carol Alt is another in a long line of hot biologists in bad monster movies. Gotta love the reliance on such clichés!

Welp, that's about it. The movie bored me, this review is boring me, and there's really not much else to say about it. Skip this one. I guarantee you that watching it will not add anything positive to your life. You won't be entertained, you won't walk away a better person, and you won't tell anybody, "You know, I'm really glad I watched Snakehead Terror." I simply cannot think of a single reason this might be worthy of 90 precious minutes.

THE GIST

If you happen to see this on TV one day then I highly recommend that you just keep on flippin'. I've seen worse, but this simply has nothing to offer. It's only for those of you who are really desperate for a bad movie.

Weak,but still pretty funny "Jaws" rip-off.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 4/10 · 10 August 2005]

A small Maryland town,desperate to recover from hard economic times,is under threat when voracious Snakehead fish mutate and survive previous lake chemical poisonings.Thriving on the hormones,the Snakehead fish grow to monstrous proportions,devouring everything within reach.Capable of moving and eating on land,they are forced to leave the now barren lake in a desperate search for food— animal,vegetable or human.Bruce Boxleitner(the town's Sheriff)and Carol Alt(the sexy scientist)team up to take on the snakeheads."Snakehead Terror" is mildly entertaining "Jaws" rip-off with snakehead fish instead of shark.The acting is suitably weak,but the gore effects are okay.The plot is totally clichéd and the computerized snakeheads look mediocre.Give it a look,if you need to see the perfect example of B-movie.

Hysterically awful SciFi Channel flick

[floating_cork · 1/10 · 13 March 2004]

So very, very bad that it's fun. We (4 of us total) watched the entire thing (I know, no life!) while spewing various and sundry beverages out of our noses from laughing so hard at the antics of these morons with power boats.

Ugly snakehead fish who growl and snarl under water and walk on land grow large and have big teeth, and terrorize morons in a community of nitwits. Mentally Deficient Teens try to save the town, end up mostly as fish food. The females are amazingly bad at trying to deliver the absurd dialogue, while the males mostly die quickly. Lots of cheesy orange colored jello-slash-body bits fly around and land on people's shocked faces. Most of the mayhem occurs from the outrageously stupid antics of the characters themselves, such as when a boat blows up when one of the teens accidentally shoots it in it's gas-filled engine with her handy-dandy pistol. HAHAHA! She was aiming at a snakehead in the water.. or was she?!?!?! These sorry antics occured so often that we began to wonder if perhaps some of the more idiotic of these kids were really in cahoots with the snakeheads.

The dialogue is so screamingly bad that it'd make Mystery Science Theatre hard put to find anything more howlingly stupid.

What fun, I think I lost 2 lbs tonight, just from laughing so hard. However, you must be in the right (read "a very stupid-funny") state of mind to enjoy something as awful as this. Otherwise it'll just make you actually consider watching tv bowling for it's intellectual and entertainment superiority.

Well...it's ahhh...something else

[jennieb145 · 9 September 2004]

I watched Snakehead Terror mostly because I'm a big fan of Bruce Boxleitner.

Wow. Does he need money this badly? The premise wasn't bad. A small town's economy is ruined by nasty snakehead fish, their lake is poisoned to kill the nasty vermin, and the town is slow to recover. The film opens with a man and his dog finding a somewhat chewed up bear on the shores of the lake, the dog running into the lake to bark at snakehead fish and the guy going into the water to save his dog. Naturally both man and dog are eaten.

If I had found the dead bear, I would have run away.

Anyway, once you actually SEE the things and notice that the fish only crawl about 0.0005 miles per hour you wonder how come no one runs away, screaming into the night or even day? I mean I can understand the fish swimming quickly in the water, but on land? I could still outrun those things even if both my legs were missing and I had only the use of my left hand.

Bruce plays the sheriff of this under-economized town and his teenaged daughter's boyfriend is killed when he is eaten by the nasty fish and Bruce wants to immediately close the lake. Of course, no one listens and the lake remains open. Then he contacts the wildlife division and they send out Carol Alt who then determines the cause of the boy's death are snakeheads. Still, no one listens. Of course, what happens next is predictable, the news leaks out, and suddenly there are bounty hunters searching for the deadly snakeheads. And of course, teenagers who never listen, go on the lake seeking revenge for the death of their friend. Like a snakehead cares.

It turns out that the town's coroner has been giving his brother large quantities of growth hormone to help encourage the growth of the lake's natural fish but unfortunately all it did was make the snakeheads grow to enormous size and they HISS, SNARL, GROWL and I swear, they bark at you too.

These things are huge with appetites to match. The CGI was not very good but the gore was incredibly....well...gory. Bits and pieces of flesh flying about, blood spurting, limbs being ripped off, it was like watching me in the kitchen vainly trying to cut up a piece of meat for dinner.

Watching this movie made me decide on a couple of things (a) not to live on a lake (b) not to have teenagers, and (c) maybe give up sushi. It's an entertaining movie, better than most I've seen on the sci fi channel and believe it or not, more than 2 people actually survive. That was a relief. In a way.

Terrifyingly Bad

[rstef1 · 1/10 · 14 March 2004]

Yet another mutant killer fish movie. The twist this time is that they can walk on land. Gasp! What could be scarier than an overgrown, flesh eating carp dragging itself through the mud after its intended victim? Just about anything else actually.

Tired format of decent sheriff (conveniently single) teaming with smart (and sexy of course) biologist to defeat the threat, while trying to convince the hard headed mayor to close the lake etc. etc. You've seen it all before, and way better in Jaws, Piranha and so forth.

Lame special effects, poor lighting, bad acting, annoying teens...need I go on? Not an original, frightening or worthwhile moment in the whole mess.

You have seen this movie before...

[drew-155 · 1/10 · 1 June 2008]

It's also called: Jaws Jaws 2 Jaws 3D Kingdom of the spiders Piranha Frogs Alligator Squirm Ants (AKA It happened at Lakewood Manor) Bug Prophecy Snowbeast The Swarm The Bees The Savage Bees Orca Grizzly Dogs

What happens is this. Man screws up the environment, and nature revolts by sending _______ to kick Man's ass. Man is having a big financial crisis, and _________ threatens it. Man summons Scientist to figure it all out. Scientist advises not to have the big _________ celebration. Government Man disagrees, because he's greedy and wants the money. Against Man's better judgment, Man lets the big ________ celebration take place. This causes mayhem and destruction. Man may or may not have romantic involvement with Scientist. Man's kid from previous marriage gets put in a vulnerable situation. Man and Scientist work together to save kid and town, and finally kills ___________. The end.

At least it's funny. Sort of.

[BabyCheddarGoldfish · 2/10 · 24 April 2008]

First off, I checked spoilers but it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to guess that this is your standard "crappy monster sci-fi watch for laughs only" movie and that it obeys every cliché of the "genre."

That being said, the premise was clearly lifted from Jaws -- small town terrorized by monster(s) who live in the water. And just like Jaws, the sheriff realizes said body of water is not safe and wants to keep people out, much to the protest of the financially-concerned town official.

But what Spielberg did right, this group did wrong. The plot is laughable. Some of the notable plot points:

-HGH-infused mutant fish have decided to crawl onto land.

-Teens try to save their town by shooting (yes, shooting) the fish.

-There's more of course that I won't get into.

The dialogue is bad. The blood and guts and gore (which are really the high point of the film) are also bad. The only redeeming quality of this film is the laugh-factor and even that is barely present.

Unless you're a fan of cheesy sci-fi/monster flicks, avoid.

And the consensus is right, this sucks!

[last_cheese · 1/10 · 8 October 2010]

Let me get technical and use some big, movie words to describe this movie. It sucks.

Snakehead Terror is about mutant fish attacking the town, and causing all sorts of chaos. Take one group of inexperienced, rowdy, drunk teens turned Militia, who are so dumb, it's painful. Add in a plot about some idiot dumping growth hormone into the water, but you know, he never meant to hurt anyone. Add in bad jokes, bad gore, and bad acting and you have this s#1t-fillet, Snakehead Terror.

I want to focus on the gore, because it could have been done right, it could have redeemed the movie, but they failed it. Instead we get cheesy gore, with blood that's extremely too bright. It all looks like raw meat with excessively too much red food coloring. And the fact the kid can walk with a broken leg? And the fish look dumb as hell, and all the do is flop back and forth. Oh and the CGI of them swimming is laughable.

Want to laugh at SciFi (or Syfy)'s expense? Watch this, you'll laugh 'til it hurts.

Well, actually, I liked it

[bababear · 6/10 · 13 November 2005]

For a Sunday afternoon cable movie, this was actually pretty good. Nice scenery. Bruce Boxlietner (who looks more and more like Bill Clinton...spooky) and former supermodel Carol Alt gave decent performances. And there were a few clichés that were avoided. Doc (the actor who was the Cigarette-Smoking Man on X-FILES) was behind the whole mess but he wound up arrested instead of being fed to the fish. The sheriff and the scientist didn't fall in love. Best of all, the sort of dopey deputy who had a crush on the scientist didn't get fed to the fish either. The mayor (who had really neat eyebrows) channeled Murray Hamilton long enough to give his little speech about how the town needs the tourist business so the beach must not be closed) and then vanishes from the plot.

Sure, this wasn't that original. The writer and director have obviously seen JAWS many times. The scene with the upside-down boat proved that (and there's no way I'd ever fire a gun while standing on an overturned boat but I guess a good guy's gun doesn't have recoil). There were some major plot holes in that this seemed to be a rather tiny town but people like the guy from the local newspaper and his photographer could go missing and people didn't think it strange. The final siege in the house was very much like THE KILLER SHREWS, but that may have been coincidence. And the ending was lifted whole cloth from JAWS 2 except the electricity went to the critters instead of one critter chomping down on a bazillion watt power line.

But in its own way it was fun. And compared to the usual Sci-Fi Channel movies it was a work of brilliance. With the exception of TERMINAL INVASION most of their original movies haven't been just tired, they've been exhausted.

Maybe with this one the actors had a nice vacation and got in some boating and fishing on their days off. And for a made for TV movie there's a surprising lot of blood and gore, both fish and human. The shot of the headless corpse spurting blood on the windshield was memorable, to say the least.

Best of all, this wasn't so dependent on computer generated effects. I've seen too many movies on that station that looked like video games.

Look for the appearance by the singing wall-mounted fish in the house where the final siege takes place. It sings "Don't Worry, Be Happy," and is a very nice touch.

Turn your brain off, get some snacks (or some sushi if you really want to get into it) and enjoy.

Chomp away

[shiningmonk · 4/10 · 7 May 2006]

Rather funny looking fish turn up in a small American town, where the local population are literally dying to be eaten in the silliest of ways. Examples are the dude who crawls towards a hissing monster with a camera and gets eaten, the twit who, noticing a monster sitting next to him in his car, tells it that he's dropped his spectacles before getting eaten, and the particularly stupid duo who manage to crash their boats into each other before getting eaten.

The monsters, realising that they're winning too easily, try to help the humans by moving incredibly slowly and hissing a lot to advertise their presence, but this doesn't stop the locals from getting devoured.

Bruce (Babylon 5) Boxleitner presides over this piece of hokum, as a Chief (Jaws) Brodie-style Sheriff, befriending an implausibly young and attractive female scientist, while his daughter takes a group of annoying teenagers out towards the lake at night, looking for particularly hilarious ways to get eaten.

At least this film explains one thing, why aliens and other dangerous monsters prefer small town America. The locals there make particularly fast food!

An appreciation of B-movies is necessary

[tuck-15 · 10/10 · 16 March 2006]

The folks who complain about the awfulness of this movie don't seem to have an appreciation of the fine art of B-movies. Why would anyone watch something called "Snakehead Terror" and NOT expect it to be cheesy? I saw this movie under perfect conditions - on late-night cable in a hotel room in Bangkok - and I can tell you that it met all of my expectations. Moderate acting skills, the requisite spunky teenagers, monsters that attacked with predictable regularity, absurd coincidences, laughs both intentional and unintentional, and several surprising scares. Not to mention a surprisingly high body count. (I was surprised how MANY of the spunky teenagers became fish food.) Watch this with the right mind-set (i.e., it ain't "Lawrence of Arabia" or "Jaws"), and you'll have a grand old time.

They swim. They crawl. They bite. They gnaw.

[michaelRokeefe · 6/10 · 28 May 2005]

This is a Sc-Fi Network presentation...one of the better ones. Very interesting story about a small fishing community hit by hard times. To boost the economy, human growth hormones are dumped in Cultus Lake causing a drastic change in the lake life. Mutante snakehead fish the size of alligators devour all that's in the lake and begins crawling on land to satisfy the thirst for human blood. Snakehead fish are serpent-headed and elongated in a torpedo shape. Some have been known to wiggle overland with extended fins and stay out of the water for up to three days.

Sheriff Patrick James(Bruce Boxleitner)and marine biologist Lori Dale(Carol Alt) team up to find a way to end the terror of the snakeheads. F/X are actually good and generates excitement. Rounding out the cast: Chelan Simmons, William B. Davis, Juliana Wimbles and Alistair Abell. Talk about the fish biting! This flick has about the same atmosphere as LAKE PLACID(1999).

Its a Friday night at a friends house, nothing is on TV......

[harry-austin · 3/10 · 30 October 2009]

You've all been there, you are with a couple of friends, and you have flicked through the channels and the DVD collection. and you have found nothing. But wait....what is this channel that you never knew existed, or that gap between the sofa and the wall? That is where you will find this shockingly terrible piece of cinema, it is not even worthy of the bargain bin! So anyway, you have nothing better to do, so you turn on the DVD player, or select that channel that you have never heard of. You open a couple of cans of drink, rip open a bag of crisps (or potato chips) and be prepared to roar with laughter at this pathetic excuse of a film. It is an insult to the 'horror' genre.

In a nutshell, we have a very simple, crude plot. Some teens, including the attractive teenage girls in tight clothes are at a lake in the middle of a forest. A local has been caught disposing of toxic waste into the lake, causing the once small or 'pesky' snake head fish to grow to unreal sizes (one is the size of a bus, this made be cry with laughter). And so, these overgrown, carnivorous fish have strong pectoral fins, enabling them to move on land by using them as limbs. They eat and kill countless people, but as the effects are so bad, all of the scenes involving this a mockable. And of course, the teenagers seek aid in the form of a shotgun, as always.

If you are a traditional film lover, who wants to see a horror film on a league with Hitchcock's or Craven's films, please don't expect much. If you are a 15 year old boy who loves cheesy gore, and you have equally odd friends you will adore this film.

not bad of it's type

[davidm-14 · 16 March 2004]

mostly pedestrian directing, acting and production, but not bad for a sci-fi channel Saturday night flick.

a small fishing town is overrun with huge, crawling. killer snakeheads (how do they continue to come up with the killer animal of the week??) and it's up to the sheriff and an aging fashion model with some type of wildlife credentials to save the day. a side plot follows the sheriff's daughter and her friends fighting to keep one step ahead of the crawling monsters.

the acting talent of bruce boxleitner as the sheriff, some surprisingly good CGI killer fish and a bit more gore than is normally shown make this movie very watchable. just don't expect too much.

Lame underwater killer goldfish run amok!

[Mikew3001 · 5/10 · 3 August 2006]

No way, a small seaside resort, some lethal murder fish killing innocent campers, fishers and tourists, an old sheriff and lots of underwater hassle... no, not Jaws, Part 26 again, but Snakehead, a new kind of killer fish, is striking this time.

The monster is a bunch of chemically mutilated shellfish with Piranha teeth that can also live underwater as creeping on land and kills everything from dogs to curious campers or stupid, drunken teenagers during their funny beach parties... and now it's Sheriff Bruce Boxleitner's turn to fight the creeping death and a skeptical mayor, accompanied by beautiful Carol Alt.

Okay, there are some really thrilling and shocking moments, but also too many fish horror standards from classics like Jaws up to contemporary copies like Lake Placid (such as point-of-view cameras and even a rip-off of John Williams' Jaws theme). Some moments are even too ridiculous and over the top and would rather fit into a Scary Movie comedy, just like a bunch of killer fish (that sometimes look like snakes or mini alligators) attacking the driver of a car or some girls in a block house by eating wholes into the wood. But if you are out for some simple underwater horror action, this flick is for you.

Cheesy horror movie I might have enjoyed when I was 15

[gian_99 · 3/10 · 24 November 2020]

I was looking for something to watch last weekend, and this was aired on a Tv station. The movie is not something which will end up in any Cinema school class. In fact it is in the "so bad it's good" category, especially when the extremely cheesy fish stalk people on land. I don't know how much effort went in trying to make those fishes believable, but ... it did not work so well. It looks something out of a high school project.

Some of the actors are famous,evidently in a low spot in their careers. But the movie is not horribly acted. What is lacking is rather a coherent story which makes sense, substituted in this movie with an attempt to model the story on the "Jaws" line (hey, it worked for Jaws!). Also lacking is... mostly everything else. Except kills. Of course lots of people get killed. Most unbelievably.

In case anyone wonders, the movie is based on a real "scare" related to asian snakehead fish which were found to have become established in some areas of the Eastern US. The real fish do not eat people, but like any invasive species they damage ecosystems... alarmist news footage of this kind of (serious) problems easily get translated into movies like this about "killer" fish, wasps, bees, anything.

To sum it up: if you want to watch a teenage horror movie with friends and some beers. This is it.

A real shocker and in a bad way

[TheLittleSongbird · 1/10 · 9 July 2010]

Now I don't mind B movies, there have been plenty that is have been critical failures yet I liked, even with their flaws. Snakehead Terror is a real shocker and not in a good way, in fact it is a "so bad, it's bad" sort of movie.

So what did I hate about Snakehead Terror? Let's see shall we?

1) An awful script, with lines so bad they bring unintentional humour at their own stupidity. - check

2) A poorly structured and completely predictable story that holds no surprises and is poorly resolved, as the climax like the script is so insane it's funny. Liked the premise but was executed awfully. - check

3) Some terrible acting, either by those who can't act for toffee or those who try so hard their talents are wasted. Bruce Boxleitner was the sole bright spot - check

4) Every cliché and rip off in the book. Monster, child in peril, sheriff, obnoxious teenagers and a love interest. - check

5) Poorly designed monster that is not intelligent but instead rather dumb, with a laughable means of opportunity. - check

6) None of the characters are remotely likable and do things that are both illogical and silly. - check

7) Sloppy direction.- check

8) The visuals are nothing special really. Scenery is okay, camera work is not. -check

9) Poor pacing with very long drawn out scenes that make you reach for the fast forward button. -check

10) Complete overkill of supermodel jokes. -check

11) Pretty awful CGI and the gore was suitably gory but overdone. -check

12) Geographical errors such as the Alleghany Mountains being the only mountains in the state, and doesn't have a snow capped mountain, unlike the one in the film.- check

So overall, as others have put it hysterically awful, yet it is something I "kind of" recommend. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Snakehead Is Proof that Garbage Sells

[spudnutsncoffee · 1/10 · 15 September 2006]

I saw this on SciFi CHannel. It sucks.

On the upside, if Snakehead proves anything it proves three things: 1) An actor will do a movie, no matter how bad it is, as long as you pay him enough. 2) A high powered electric gun in the hands of a woman is a recipe for disaster. 3) and three, if Sci-Fi channel feeds us enough crap for long enough, eventually people will begin to adjust and lower their expectations enough to see that crap as high art.

I wish Sci-Fi would stop insulting us with this garbage and show movies that challenge us to think instead of just sit there with our brains open so Sci-Fi Channel could can use it as a septic tank for flotsam.

I am, however, encourage by an original Scf-Fi channel movie in the works. It is called "Dinocrocasaurusacondachabrafish". It centers on a giant, mutant dinosaur that was found frozen in the Antarctic. A team of leading scientists are able to thaw the giant carcass, only to discover that it is still alive! They soon find themselves in a fight for their lives which they quickly lose. Then, in a freak accident, the dinosaur falls into a pool of toxic waste containing the genetic code of 5 species of freak monsters. The dinosaur mutates even further, and grows to half the size of the planet earth, leaving destruction in its path, as a rogue team of military mercenary/martial arts experts pit their wits and superhuman powers against the giant beast!!

The tagline is : "When nature calls, don't answer!"

I just cannot wait!

A clichéd fiasco

[pepe4u22 · 1/10 · 7 December 2009]

Nothing was on tonight so I watched this movie and was absolutely blown away by the poor production numbers the mind-numbing acting and clichéd script. I hope any money made on this movie goes directly the the screenwriter of Jaws2 as the movie literally was taken from this movie. It was so bad that the prospect of shovelling snow outside in -25 temperatures was an option taken... The only highlight was the flimsy wardrobe given to Carol Alt, who is still smoking hot...Must have put the budget at $20.00 at the local Value Village. As for Bruce Boxleitner he must have done it for the money because his performance was a phone in job if I have ever seen one and for the supporting cast my goodness they were very amateurish I have seen better performances in watching paint dry as it was less painful than the acting presented.

Lung fish + barracuda + mongoose = Snakehead Terror

[Chase_Witherspoon · 7/10 · 29 April 2011]

A struggling lakeside community is thrown into turmoil when after a plague of ecologically harmful snakeheads thought to have been eradicated, re-surfaces with a mutated appetite for live meat. Local sheriff Bruce Boxleitner and expatriate biologist Carla Alt set about trying to prevent the deadly spawn from reaching the river system, where there accelerated maturity would result in uncontrollable breeding and eventual national disaster.

"Snakehead Terror" wades into the obscure but no less menacing spectre of snakeheads, which ultimately begs the question: what is a Snakehead? If you said something akin to a lung fish equipped with the jaws of a barracuda and attitude of a rabid mongoose, then you've evidently seen "Snakehead Terror". After the initial corpse (or more specifically, severed limb) turns up, and the first hero is quickly dispatched, various local identities are introduced and then casually pulped by the voracious Snakeheads, forcing Boxleitner and his beautiful boffin into action.

Despite the usual absurdities (discovery of a container marked "Human Growth Hormone") the script is by no means unintelligent and the acting and characterisations realistic and not over-played. Fans of the X-Files will relish the appearance of William B.Davis in a key supporting role, while genre director Gary Jones has a small role as the key perpetrator, unwittingly connected with the infestation. Bloody is the operative word here; there's a whole bagful of body parts on which to piece together the mystery, including the obligatory severed head, and even a thorough examination of reverse digestion. Very graphic.

Predictable formula, but nonetheless taut and involving with likable, balanced characterisations, "Snakehead Terror" is a better than average "monster-in-the-lake" movie that's definitely got teeth.

Ho Hum...almost

[lottatitles · 3/10 · 13 March 2004]

(Spoilers) This could have been a nice monster flick. I mean, there ARE snakehead fish, they DO grow to over four feet and some, in Asia, have been rumored to attack humans. So, all they had to do was stick with facts and rumors to get a good story going. No...they had to use the old..."we can't close the lake, it'll ruin business" line (Jaws) and "I know they said don't go near the lake but..." from every monster movie made. Next we have the obligatory teens hunting the fish...in the water...with a gun. Lots of munching and chomping. And, of course, it was all caused by human-growth-hormone released in the water. Oh, well. It could have been toxic spill or acid rain. It also could have been a much better movie.

Fantastic creature feature effort

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 9/10 · 14 September 2012]

After a small-town survives an infestation of snakehead fish, a group of local teens finds that the creatures haven't been killed off yet and are still running wild through the community where they must fight them off so they can escape and deal with the terrifying fish.

This is still one of the best Sci-Fi Channel original creature features from the channel. One of the film's numerous good points is the fact that this one decides to charge forth with a lot of action within, making this a really breathless experience. The film decides that as the continuous chances to showcase the killer instincts of the fish is brought to full bear, as they are shown to stalk their prey in groups, converging slowly and then attacking individually or swimming in packs to overwhelm prey. Coming with a full assortment of big attack scenes, including the water-based ambushes that start the film off, a slew of attacks against the townspeople out on the water chasing down the group who are coming after them and featuring all the great swarming done by the creatures. As well, the action picks up considerably as there's a great deal of action in the second half that takes place on the island as this features the massive swarming on the beach, a fantastic home invasion with lots of stalking and fighting off the creatures as they barricade themselves away waiting for help and a grand finale which is a lot of fun to witness the kind of inventive techniques used to stop them on top of the numerous woodland attacks which is fun when it gets going as all these confrontations mean a high dose of blood and gore that is nice enough to satisfy. Having heads and limbs being removed and their stumps spurting blood is certainly more violent than figured, and along with the great special effects as the fish are realistically captured when used as puppets that they're worthwhile enough to score some nice points for the majority of the scenes, these here are the film's more enjoyable elements. Despite having a lot of focus with the puppets, this ends up dipping into the well for CGI on some useless sequences and are a little hard to swallow. There's also the fact that it does feel like a rip-off of some many different films at times with scenes or themes taken wholesale from other films throughout, and those are the obvious ones. A mayor who doesn't want to spoil the fishing season's income, the police chief who knows everything and tries to stop it, the biologist who knows how to stop the threat, the creatures attacking the police chief's children in open waters and an electrocution kills the monster all serve as the biggest examples. While these are the flaws, it's not enough to damage this one.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language.

Cute, funny, horror, sweet character, love it, eye candy

[seckinlergafri · 7/10 · 19 July 2017]

Plot: tells the story of a tragic incident that killed a resident in a small town on a lake .. The lake was named Lake Cultus Lake, sheriff patrick james with his fellow biologist marine investigating the death case, apparently caused by a mutated Snakehead fish and Become a ferocious and aggressive predator .. Another place Amber James daughter Sheriff patrick james. And his friends had to be trapped on an island and the island was already surrounded by a hungry snakehead ... This movie is very entertaining, forget the story, the characters in this movie is very silly .. Dialogue dialogue that catapulted the characters in this movie makes me laugh, the excess of this movie there is a handsome Ryan McDonell who played in this movie I like him .. Snakehead Terror. Funny, entertaining, horror, and fun

Tearjerking

[jp76-1 · 2/10 · 23 November 2006]

A shocker in ever sense of the word, even the usually fit biologist looked like she'd fallen asleep with a bot-ox needle stuck in her face, I couldn't work out most of the film, like the 'shock' on peoples faces when they saw something, but we (the viewer) didn't get to see, like the insides of the snakeheads gut's on the pier, the old bloke in the chair etc. etc. unless i was just watching a cut version but I cant believe they would bother cutting this tripe. The lake was nice and pretty but basically that was the only thing worth watching about this pathetically lame film. If a snake head fish started crawling after me I'd boot it in the head. There is no way any snakehead fish could kill me, the one that looked like a whale at the end might have a go but lets be honest you're never going to get snakehead fish that big. If they were going to include a monster snakehead fish the size of a whale at the finale why didn't they have it do something, like rear up out of the water and swallow someone like miss bot-ox? All the giant snakehead did was bang into the jetty a couple of times like can't you see the jetty pal.. oh please don't bang into the jetty its so frightening, I could have picked it off with a catapult. I quite like monster films but prefer them not to be made into comedies, it just feels like everyone involved in movies like this are in it for one thing, money, not credibility and certainly not to provide viewer satisfaction.