After patrons at a Coyote Ugly-style Hong Kong nightclub begin to turn up dead, their bodies bearing strange wounds and traces of a rare poison, Melissa (Marsha Yuen)—one of its five feisty female owners, and an avid snake collector—becomes the prime suspect. Inspector Chi-Wai Man (Jackie Lui) is assigned to the case, and, as the bodies pile up, he slowly falls for the lovely Melissa (despite being phobic about reptiles). Can the woman he cares about really be a cold-blooded killer?
Snake Charmer suffers heavily from an excess of irritating editing and erratic camera-work (especially whip pans, each accompanied by annoying 'whoosh' sound effect), but strip away all of the unnecessarily showy film-making techniques, and there's still very little of interest—a mediocre mystery, saddled with dodgy CGI effects (the poisoned victims hallucinate, imagining that they are being attacked by giant snakes), boring action scenes, dull dialogue (including a riveting chat about Japanese coffee and German crockery), and forgettable characters.
When two of the most memorable things about the film are its use of a bad instrumental version of The Pet Shop Boys' cover of 'Always On My Mind', and a hilarious anti-drugs message during the closing credits, then it's fairly safe to say that Snake Charmer has all the appeal of a sack full of angry King Cobras.
Snake Charmer suffers heavily from an excess of irritating editing and erratic camera-work (especially whip pans, each accompanied by annoying 'whoosh' sound effect), but strip away all of the unnecessarily showy film-making techniques, and there's still very little of interest—a mediocre mystery, saddled with dodgy CGI effects (the poisoned victims hallucinate, imagining that they are being attacked by giant snakes), boring action scenes, dull dialogue (including a riveting chat about Japanese coffee and German crockery), and forgettable characters.
When two of the most memorable things about the film are its use of a bad instrumental version of The Pet Shop Boys' cover of 'Always On My Mind', and a hilarious anti-drugs message during the closing credits, then it's fairly safe to say that Snake Charmer has all the appeal of a sack full of angry King Cobras.