From my main man Tibor Takacs, creator of the
classic 'Ice Spiders', comes his latest insect epic…
'Spiders'. Now here's my issue right off the bat.
These spiders come from space thus the obvious title of this
movie should've been 'Space Spiders', right? I mean
'Spiders'… what does that tell you? Absolutely
nothing. However 'Space Spiders' automatically gives you
goose bumps, because it's like Spiders from Space. I
know it's Spiders 3D for a few out there, but not me.
Who wouldn't line up to see Spiders from Space? I know I
would.
We are hanging out in space and see a Russian satellite, all
CCCP'd out, so we know that this satellite has to be from the
old Soviet Union. Inside the satellite we see dead
cosmonauts and live spiders. Can't be good. I
guess I could ask why the cosmonauts are wearing their space
suits inside the space station or whatever that is, but we
aren't going to ask that question. Next thing we know a
meteor or something hits this space station and sends a big
chunk of it straight to Bulgaria, doubling for New York
City. If you have graffiti on the walls and Newspaper
boxes on the street with Village Voice stickers on them, you
must be in New York City. For true NYC authenticity,
Takacs should've made the streets smell like urine.
Now we meet Jason (Patrick Muldoon), the hardworking Subway
dispatcher who has a slight situation in that this meteor has
just landed in one of his tunnels. He has his boy Jimmy
to take a look but Jimmy falls on the hot rail after getting
bitten by one of the spiders. Have to give a shout out
to my other main man Atanas Srebrev as I believe this is the
45th movie that we've seen that Atanas has been in, making him
the king actor of this site. Congratulations Atanas
Srebrev!
Jason also has an estranged wife in Rachel
(Christa Campbell) and a twelve year old daughter in Emily
(Sydney Sweeney), but his main focus right now is the hold up
in his tunnels. He takes his boys down there, along with
a couple of exterminators, but these spiders are completely
immune to Raid and Hot Shot.
Time to call in the government, but does the government see a
pest problem? No sir they do not. They see a
potential weapon that will change the game. I'm just
telling you what Col. Jenkins (William Hope) has said.
So we're gonna weaponize space spiders, but we need the queen
egg because without the queen egg the program won't be
viable. I can't remember why. Something about the
other spiders dying off or something. Even though they
seem to be able to lay eggs without the queen. But
again, we're not asking these questions. Plus Col
Jenkins has decided to kill everybody who might know something
about anything. Because he's a dick. There is
really no reason to do this. Regardless, the
Colonel will have other things on his mind in a few minutes as
the queen egg has hatched and she's grown fast and
angry. She's one big ass spider and she's crushing the
hell out of New York. There's nothing we can do to stop
this thing. But I'm thinking our subway dispatcher,
upset at this spider for putting his family at risk, is going
to find a way to make it pay!
Well, aside from the titling faux pas of not calling his movie
'Space Spiders', as it was begging to be called, 'Spiders'
wasn't all that bad, all things considered. I mean it
was better than 'Ice Spiders' for whatever that's worth, and
it was better than the last monster spider movie we saw in
'Camel Spiders', which is probably even worth less, but it was
okay. In a very mediocre way.
The good about 'Spiders', really the best thing, are the
spiders themselves. These over-ambitious SyFy type
movies tend to drown in a sea of cut-rate CGI effects which
usually only serves up more laughter than thrills or scares,
but it looks like somebody threw some money at these effects
as they were about as good as I've seen in a lower budgeted
monster movie. We can see the budget limitations in the
limited sets and the two block backlot that's supposed to be
tricking us into believing its New York City, but if you call
your movie Spiders, at the very least make the spiders look
good, and the filmmakers did manage to pull that off.
For the most part, acting performances in a movie like this
are negligible, just need people to scream, die and look
heroic, but we do have to admit they weren't a strong point
here. We are big Christa Campbell fans here at the FCU
as she has a lot of gifts that we are thankful for, in this
movie her acting really just wasn't one of them. Patrick
Muldoon fared a little better, which was a surprise, but what
wasn't a surprise was actor William Hope playing a back
stabbing bureaucrat. This dude plays this singular role
so often than I'm thinking he can't be trusted in real life.
What ultimately makes 'Spiders' just an average monster movie
is that it really doesn't do anything all that special.
The narrative is rote, the pace is a little on the languid
side, and it doesn't bring anything new to the table as far as
these types of movies go, if that's even possible to do at
this point. But it is competent and serviceable, and
while we would prefer more if we can get it, we can be
satisfied taking what we got.
