An Unhinged Jaws Replacement From the ‘90s Is About To Leave Netflix

When Steven Spielberg’s Jaws swam into theaters in 1975, it not only created the summer blockbuster trend but also sparked a fresh wave of creature features. Suddenly, a feeding frenzy of similar animal-attack movies took a chomp at box office success in a phenomenon that became known as Jawsploitation, but none were quite as unhinged as a ‘90s Jaws replacement that is about to leave Netflix.

Luis Llosa’s Anaconda is, without a doubt, one of the most absurd man vs. monster movies that followed Jaws. Essentially playing out as Jaws-in-the-jungle, the ‘90s classic stars Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, and Owen Wilson as members of a documentary film crew in the Amazon who rescue John Voight’s Paul, a snake hunter who is hunting down a giant, legendary green anaconda. The movie has been streaming on Netflix for a while now, but that is about to change, as Anaconda is tagged with a February 1st departure date.

Anaconda Is the Wild, Campy Monster Movie That Keeps Slithering to Success

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Anaconda was far from a critical success and initially received little love from viewers – it holds a 41% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and an even worse 24% audience rating – but everything that was panned by audiences, including the over-the-top acting and the nonsensical script, only added to the movie’s charm. Although designed to fill the void for high-stakes, animal-attack survival horror left in the wake of Jaws, the film abandoned the suspense-driven, less-is-more approach of the Spielberg classic and instead leaned into the absolute absurdity of its premise and, in doing so, carved out a unique legacy as a “so-bad-it’s-good” 90s cult classic.

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The movie sits perfectly between a genuine horror-thriller and a self-aware, cheesy creature feature that is dramatic, over-the-top, and campy in the best ways possible. From Voight’s wildly over-the-top performance to the fun and chaotic nature of the plot and the giant snake who has a keen sense of dramatic timing, the movie is just about as unhinged as it gets, and it’s all the better for it. Anaconda has endured as a beloved cult classic precisely because of the elements that critics initially despised, and it’s been massively successful.

Despite the overwhelmingly poor reviews, Anaconda was a commercial hit that grossed over $136 million worldwide against a production budget of $45 million. Its success sparked a franchise that has spanned every subsequent decade, with the most recent installment, 2025’s meta-reboot movie starring Jack Black and Paul Rudd, grossing $128 million worldwide.

Where to Stream Anaconda After It Leaves Netflix?

Creature feature lovers will want to stream Anaconda while they still can. Netflix is the only major streaming platform to have the ‘90s cult classic in its library, and the film hasn’t yet appeared on the February 2026 content lists for any other platform. This means that following its February 1st Netflix exit, Anaconda may disappear from streaming for the time being.

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