The Serpent waves plenty of red flags before it has even begun. The film’s writer, director, and star are all the same person. This is a lot to take on and usually hinders every aspect of a production. Making things even scarier is the formulaic plot. Agent Lucinda Kavaky (Gia Skova) is one of the CIA’s best agents. She is sent on a particularly sensitive mission that fails spectacularly. As it turns out, her own bosses are out to get her. And getting away involves uncovering a massive conspiracy.
The Serpent has one possible saving grace. It is a fast paced action movie. If done right, it does not have to do anything out of the ordinary. It can be a lot of dumb fun and may even end up being good. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. The film is all over the place. When a story reveals its big twist within the first ten minutes, it is a clue that something is slightly off. This may be the easiest part of The Serpent to understand. The movie takes wild narrative leaps and is close to impossible to follow for the majority of the time.
Even as action movie characters go, the ones in The Serpent are particularly shallow. The titular protagonist has the most basic of motivations while many others go completely unnamed. All together, it makes it impossible to get immersed in the film. The plot lacks any sort of flow and figuring out when things are happening would be akin to trying to unravel the overrated Primer.
The question becomes is The Serpent a bad enough film to be a fun watch? The problem is it lacks the charm to be enjoyable. It is too confusing to be fun, too inconsistent to be entertaining. In other words, it is a frustrating watch that is not worth the time.
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