You may’t have a picnic on the seaside after which be upset when seagulls present up. And whenever you promote a free-for-all python searching contest providing money to anybody keen to run via swamps in the course of the evening and convey again lethal snakes, you actually haven’t any proper to complain when unusual characters begin showing in your doorstep.
But it surely’s not like I’ve a greater thought for culling the invasive Burmese python inhabitants within the Florida Everglades. Since 1992, when Hurricane Andrew ripped via Miami throughout a wildlife conference and launched international species into the state’s swamps, these strangling snakes have been reproducing within the Everglades and feasting on native species. The overwhelming majority of Florida preservation fanatics need these intruders gone — as do the overwhelming majority of regular folks, who don’t want a principled cause for preferring to not stay anyplace close to 20-foot pythons.
The prevalence of pythons, and the problem of eradicating them, has spawned a cottage trade of python hunters. The state of Florida has been keen to pay licensed professionals to spend their nights driving via abandoned roads within the Everglades on the lookout for these snakes and bringing them again lifeless. Finally, some good bureaucrats realized that people are motivated by competitors, and the Florida Python Problem was born. Every October, Florida invitations skilled and newbie python hunters from world wide into the Everglades for a 10-night competitors to see who can take away essentially the most nocturnal snakes. The outcomes are finally a drop within the bucket — most contests take away a pair hundred pythons from a inhabitants of a number of hundred thousand — however goddamn, does it make for some entertaining cinema.
Xander Robin’s documentary “The Python Hunt” follows a coterie of misfits who descend upon the Everglades to compete within the festivities. The ensemble of characters making up the Florida-fied “Cannonball Run” embody Anne, a widowed grandmother and self-described “nature lover” who decides to enter the competition as one last journey and demonstrates a sadistic obsession with stabbing pythons via the mind; Toby Benoit, a tobacco-chewing journalist and swamp fanatic who provides to be Anne’s chaperone; and Jimbo, a neighborhood python searching fanatic who’s so bitter about being banned from the occasion over dishonest allegations that he spends his days making faux pythons to idiot the out-of-state vacationers that he seems to be down upon.
The hunters spend 10 nights prowling the again roads of the Everglades with the hope of reeling within the greatest snakes they’ll discover, typically demonstrating a blatant disregard for private security. The movie options some spectacular moments of snake spectacle, however the actual attraction is the human drama that emerges from the larger-than-life personalities. Everybody has totally different motives, from principled preservationists to sadistic killers to observers who simply search for totally different species like they’re taking part in an enormous sport of Pokemon Go. And whereas it may be hilarious to see how a lot of their identification some folks get from their standing inside a distinct segment world of snake-hunting, the movie does make house for some bigger conversations concerning the function that extermination performs in preservation.
There’s no denying that the pythons pose an actual menace to Florida’s ecosystems, however totally different voices within the python searching group have totally different opinions about find out how to take care of it. Some really feel that the gamified facet of those searching contests convey the improper sort of folks out of the woodwork, and giving them permission to kill pythons will finally result in them hurting the species we need to protect. Others really feel that authorities officers use the python drawback as a sensational story to drag consideration away from larger environmental points like air pollution. And a few are so libertarian of their strategy to snake searching that they suppose the federal government ought to play no function and easily go away Florida natives to are likely to their very own swamps. The conversations are fascinating, nevertheless it does generally really feel like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, as there has by no means been a profitable elimination of an invasive reptile inhabitants and the pythons are breeding a lot sooner than anybody in Florida can eliminate them.
Nothing is ever sure on the planet of movie distribution, however I’d be shocked if “The Python Hunt” doesn’t get picked up by a streamer and turn out to be a minimum of a minor cultural phenomenon. The premise is simply too compelling and the characters are too zany for it to not crack the mainstream ultimately. The “Florida Man Does Loopy Shit” trope has turn out to be overplayed lately (and in case your bandwidth for such discourse is actually spent, maybe search your leisure elsewhere), however “The Python Hunt” simply is likely to be the uncommon venture that’s indescribable sufficient to interrupt via a saturated area of interest and turn out to be the subsequent “Tiger King.”
Grade: B+
“The Python Hunt” premiered at SXSW 2025. It’s presently looking for U.S. distribution.
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