I wouldn’t exactly call The Snake enjoyable but it is interesting to see what direction it takes from scene to scene. The erratic incoherence of the movie is baffling and fascinating and features several actors, most notably the lead Jamie (Susan Kent), who are all totally game to mug and ham it up to meet the writing’s energy. Director Jenna MacMillan has created high-strung stream-of-consciousness film that blows with the wind the same way its erratic and scatterbrained central character just enters and leaves scenarios like Godzilla with destruction in her wake. Normally these kinds of movies annoy me because they play everything up to the point where it becomes boring, but The Snake has the attention span of a toddler. It’s not satisfied with playing out any scene and that gives it a kind of unique drive that kept me watching.
Juggling the Chaos
Jamie is a 40-year-old woman-child who has a strained relationship with basically everyone – her mother Anne (Robin Duke), her on-and-off lover Davey Danger (Dan Petronijevic), and her best friend, and successful counterpart, Laura (Emma Hunter). Jamie is trying to keep control of her grandmother’s inheritance while her mother is trying to take it away from her. Jamie roams around town from place to place trying to juggle her romantic relationship with Davey while suing her mother for control of her grandmother’s house all with the help of Laura’s reluctant and neurotic husband Steve (Jonathan Torrens).
A Few Good Jokes
There’s a lot of this movie that simply seems slipshod from a technical and narrative standpoint. The visual focus of the film flatly films its characters in sitcom like mid-shots that have no dynamism. The comedy is mostly corny 90’s style low-brow hijinks of chaos. However, there is a good joke here and there like when Lydia visits her mother to tell her she has hired a lawyer “Steen” (she hesitates between giving Steve’s real name and a fake moniker): “You will be buried alive…. in law… paper…work.” Torrens and Kent exhibit the best chemistry of the bunch, the kind of odd couple – Kent being a wild child and Torrens the awkward stiff – that makes their escapades a bit more personable and filled with depth that the rest of the characters don’t quite offer.
Conclusion
The Snake feels like a movie that is desperately trying to create chaos instead of letting its lead character naturally conjure it up. Kent does her best in portraying wild mood-swings, immature behavior, erratic emotional impulses, but that’s not enough. MacMillan has to manufacture scenarios that feel contrived and tend to last a bit too long with hammy acting and artificially upping the stakes. It makes the film’s emotional punches have less impact and undermines its lead actresses ability to carry the film.
The Snake premiered at the 2026 SXSW Film Festival on March 13th, 2026.
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