Movie Review: 'The Serpent' is 'The Room' of Action Movies

One thing I refuse to do in this review is dismiss Gia Skova because she is a model. That’s a desperately outmoded notion that all models are idiots, it was a jealous and uninspired stereotype when it was invented and it is far too simplistic and nasty to remain in our culture. I am not going to dismiss Gia Skova just because she used to be a model. I am going to judge her solely as a filmmaker and as a filmmaker, she’s… not a good filmmaker.

The evidence is clear in Skova’s debut feature as a writer-producer-director and also the star of the new movie The Serpent. The Serpent is, ostensibly, an action movie about a CIA Agent battling a high level conspiracy within and without the CIA. I say ostensibly because only God knows what The Serpent was intended to be. The finished product has words that refer to things we recognize such as the CIA or China but when we actually see these things, the approximation of the familiar fails to fully appear.

I will give you a for instance, when Agent Kavsky, Skova’s character in The Serpent, goes to China for an assignment what we think of as China appears to be the former set of the comedy series Children’s Hospital dressed up with Chinese letters on the walls and the kind of production design that one might find if a Party City location were to act as set dressers. This ‘hospital’ in ‘China’ has multiple paper lanterns hanging from the ceilings. The set design can’t even be called half-assed, they didn’t even use a part of their ass to craft this.

The ‘CIA’ of the movie is headed up by a guy who truly cannot act to save his life. This poor man desperately struggles with the incomprehensible script and falters in every scene he is featured in. The poor man is directed to fire an Agent in the hallway of the ‘CIA,’ and his reason for firing the man, publicly is this brilliant bit of dialogue “Your career is finished because you're an idiot, and a damned loser.” The line is delivered with all of the talent of someone who has never acted in his life and I honestly don’t know if he’s a bad actor or he was just so thoroughly defeated by the script that he just gave up and went full ham.

There are Wiseau-ian echoes throughout The Serpent, non-sequitur dialogue, non-sequitur scenes, non-sequitur action sequences. At one point an actor cast as a Los Angeles Homicide Detective ends up going on a CIA mission with Kavsky, bear in mind, they met less than a day ago, and the series of scenes ends with him asking her to marry him and raise the 3 Asian children they just rescued. Apropos of absolutely nothing, she agrees.

Those children by the way, have had Nuclear Bombs surgically implanted into their brains. They were orphans, I think, who had the chips implanted into their heads during the "China" "hospital" scene and after the movie flashes forward five years, and while Kavsky is in jail for... reasons, the children are to be adopted to major cities around the world before the bad guy in the movie detonates their tiny child brains and nukes a large portion of humanity. The chips, when removed, look exactly like cell phone memory cards in yet another poignant, pathetic example of what passes as effort in The Serpent.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the child brain nuclear weapon plot as it sounds like something Donald Kaufman might have written if he weren’t a figure of Charlie Kaufman’s imagination from Adaptation. You can sense that Gia Skova has definitely read McKee and taken classes in screenplay writing at some point. The plot is both incredibly simple and desperately overbooked. The dialogue keeps tripping over exposition, either too much as a character has a line like “If I understand it correctly, this is the 3rd death this week within the Verika corporation?” Or too little exposition as Kavski begins to explain the baffling plot before cutting to another piece of action and returning to dialogue that implies she explained everything while we were watching the car chase.

This is the literal exchange between Kavsky and the LAPD Detective as she pops up in the backseat of his car out of nowhere:

“Who the hell are you?”

“Lucinda Kavsky, CIA. I will tell you everything I know about this case. Okay?”

Cut to action outside the vehicle for 5 seconds. No dialogue, just a terrible synth score. Then, we are slammed back inside the vehicle and:

“Well, hot damn if I don’t believe that story. How’d you get into this mess? Y’know, I think you’re going to have to contact Rodney Williams of the CIA, there’s no other choice.”

“I’ve already sent all the proof to him.”

“Well, you’ve got to tell him about the other bombs inside the kids.”

This is LITERALLY the first time we have heard about Bombs inside of kids. This concept of children with nuclear bombs in their heads is introduced this shoddily and IS the main plot of the rest of the movie. Oh by the way, much of the movie unfolds as a flashback as we go back in time to show the hospital scene, again, apropos of nothing. One minute we’re in a car chase and the ‘head of the CIA’ is trying to kill Kavsky and the Detective, and then we are back in time to before the babies had nukes stuffed into their brains.

Another utterly brilliant scene reminded me of the classic Seinfeld episode The Yada Yada. In that episode, people keep using the phrase Yada Yada to cover up terrible things they may have done, tossing them off as if they aren’t important enough to be stated plainly. When the kids are rescued, Kavsky seemingly yada yada’s the fact that the bombs have been removed from the kids’ brains off screen. She doesn’t say Yada Yada but she might as well have for how utterly non-sequitur this revelation is, coming as it does, just as the bad guy is attempting to detonate their little brains and kill a billion people.

Other scenes play like the flower shop scene from The Room as if the dialogue were delivered out of order and assembled too quickly to make any logical sense. A rando CIA Agent asks Kavsky to take his assignment to go to China. At first he and Kavsky appear to be strangers just by the body language of the actors. He’s getting married soon and he thinks the mission might make him miss his wedding, so he gives it to Kavsky as if they were trading shifts at Starbucks. She agrees and says she would only do it for him as if they’d been friends for years.

I could describe every scene of this ludicrous movie in this fashion but I won’t. I will say, I was incredibly entertained by The Serpent, which is Kavsky’s codename though only Gia Skova knows why, but not in any way I feel was intended to be entertained. If The Serpent were intended as a parody it would have to be Andy Kaufman levels of brilliant in keeping a straight face amid the fakery. No, this is clearly a movie that is just this badly made. Unintentionally hilarious with an effort that is rendered poignantly pathetic by the final product of that effort.

Somehow, The Serpent will be given a limited theatrical release on June 18th with a day and date release on all streaming rental services. If you are a fan of so bad it’s funny movies like The Room, you might find some unintended fun in The Serpent. As for Gia Skova, she didn’t fail as a filmmaker because she’s a model, she’s not dumb, she just has a limited grasp of the language of film and not nearly enough people around her to tell her when she’s making mistakes. That’s unfortunate as she’s created a truly embarrassing effort in The Serpent.

P.S. If you are wondering if this is the worst movie of 2021, no it's not. The Serpent was made with no malice of forethought. Gia Skova is not a bad person, she just made a bad movie. The makers of the movie Scavenger, on the other hand, are vile human beings with no talent who made a vicious and ugly movie intended to harm those who watch it. I will take a million poorly made but genuine movies like The Serpent before I would ever see something as vile Scavenger ever again.