‘Snake Hotel’ VOD Review (Amazon Prime)

Stars: Natasha Tosini, Danielle Scott, Chrissie Wunna, Gillian Broderick, Jase Rivers, Kelly Rian Sanson, Stephen Staley, Lila Lasso, Marcus Massey, Jamie Littlewood, Vitaliya Dias | Written by Harry Boxley, Charles Solly, James Solly | Directed by Charles Solly

We’re back in Jagged Edge Productions territory with Snake Hotel, which stars Scott Jeffrey regular Danielle Scott as one of a group of women given a chance to get out of prison early if… if… they agree to take part in a game of cat and mouse with a giant mutated snake. A snake!

Hey, at least we’re not retreading nursery rhyme or fairytale terror in this one!

As bizarre premises go, Snake Hotel isn’t actually that weird – after all, back in 2021, Jagged Edge Productions produced Dinosaur Hotel which had pretty much the exact same premise, only with (obviously) dinosaurs instead of snakes! Well, not quite the same premise. Dinosaur Hotel saw a group of women taking part in a “gameshow” that turned out to be being trapped in a hotel with a group of blood-thirty dinosaurs. Whilst the premise is slightly different, swapping down-on-their-luck women for prisoners it LOOKS like the location is identical…

One thing that is different about this film is the set-up. Snake Hotel has one of the weirdest setups going. Seriously. An ominous voiceover from the father of our two heroines that suggests the pair are more than what they seem (they killed their abusive father hence being in prison); a brief scene in which we realise the sisters aren’t the best prison inmates and cause more trouble than its probably worth – facing possible solitary confinement for fighting with Danielle Scott’s insane inmate; and then a sequence in which we see other people, including some other Scott Jeffrey regulars, get munched on by the titular giant snakes – yes, snakes plural after – being scuppered by an android who “runs” the hotel and the competition within it. And that’s all before the opening credits!

What’s interesting, well I say interesting but it’s probably only interesting to me given just how many Scott Jeffrey productions I’ve watched over the years, the villain of this film is Chrissie Wunna’s Miss Fang. Now Wunna was the heroine of Dinosaur Hotel but here she channels a psycho-sexual energy as the deranged “mother” of the overly-enlarged snakes, seemingly getting her rocks off on seeing – well, in the case of the low-budget nature of Snake Hotel – HEARING her “children” eat their prey. There’s also another reoccurring “thing” in Snake Hotel. Miss Fang’s assistant android, which is actually just the robot costume from another Jeffrey production, 2022’s Prototype, a bleak sci-fi horror that also starred Danielle Scott.

So, to recap, Snake Hotel is essentially a remake of Dinosaur Hotel, which was inspired by the “dinosaurs running round a house” part of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; and features the same (or if not the same, a remarkably similar) location; some of the same cast as the previous “hotel” movie; and the robot costume from a previous, unrelated film. Talk about recycling ideas!

But then that’s the Scott Jeffrey way isn’t it? Make the most of your ideas, your budget and your cast. And a lot of the time it works out but here? Not so much. Maybe it’s because Miss Fang’s android assistant keeps referring to the female prisoners trapped in the hotel as “juicy meat” or “psycho whores”? For yes, this film does NOT have the best script or even decent CGI to back up the bad script. Danielle Scott’s character even rips off THAT famous saying from Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes on a Plane for god’s sake! Speaking of Scott, her “bad to the bone” inmate Faye quickly turns into something of a joke in Snake Hotel – even when she’s supposed to have carved her way out of the belly of a snake… It’s not Scott’s fault, instead the soundtrack makes her demented attack on Linda and Mia (her arch-nemesis’ from prison.. why? Honestly, why? It’s never really explained) seem like a blood-drenched Benny Hill sketch! It’s also probably one of the reasons why Snake Hotel is listed as a comedy on IMDb!

But the worst crime Snake Hotel commits? Having Mia survive this ordeal because… she’s a descendant of the Knights Templar! Like WTF?! Seriously? You can make it up. Well, it looks like writers Harry Boxley, Charles Solly and James Solly did, probably as they were going along judging by the finished product!

** 2/5

Snake Hotel is available to stream now as part of Amazon Prime Video in the UK and for free on Tubi in the US.