Spiders (2000)

Couldn't stop laughing the whole way through this movie, simply because they were trying to be serious. A horror sci-fi.... my ass it is.... pure comedy man. My favourite bit was where the spider that just hatched from the guys body, burst out of the college (bigger than a helicopter) and preceded to run over the grass.... and i mean over, as in about a foot above the grass. No but seriously the plastic spider being dangled in front of the camera was the height of the amazing special effects. Definitely worth the 50p i spent on it. Just don't be expecting good effects, storyline, acting, writing, sound effects, soundtrack, cast or pretty much anything if you try and take it seriously. Oh and there are some wet t-shirt moments. Enjoy.

I remember watching this movie a long time ago and I specifically remember liking this movie so much and I saw it about another 20 more times, now after looking at it again in 8 years I ask myself: "What made me like this movie so much?" This movie essentially tells the story of a shuttle mission gone wrong. When a solar flair hits a space shuttle affecting a select number of spiders that have been injected with alien DNA, it crash lands in a secret government base outside of L.A. Now, after a huge spider is on the loose, it's up to a pretty boy MIB, a somewhat cute college reporter and an oddball group of college photographers to stop it. This movie had some impressive make-up and special effects, really bad acting and voice-overs and did a great job utilizing some conspiracy theories to intensify this story.First off, this movie had some very impressive and very gory make-up in this movie that I remember. Whenever somebody got bitten by these spiders, they become deformed and huge sacks of pus or swollen skin starts to form on their faces and bodies. The make-up really enhances this syndrome and it really brings justice to the "scare factor." The notable make-up jobs would be the astronauts that were in the shuttle and how each of them looked like after the spider attacked them. There is a great amount of gore in this movie that ranges from puking, to spider transformation, to shootings, even to spider bites. There was one scene in particular that I remember for being very disturbing was when a huge spider tunnels its way out of somebody's mouth and attacks someone. There was a great effect when the lead villain turns into a spider and legs start exploding from his back. There was a lot of gore when people got shot or when the camera showed the aftermath of when the spider exploded out of somebody's stomach. When it came to the spiders, they were CG, of course, but for that time and for this kind of movie, the CG was pretty outstanding and the director knew how to utilize the real life thing to accompany for the computerized monster. Though, this is coming from the guy who did Skeeter. For a no-budgeter, it had some very good gore scenes.The acting was far from being good; in fact, most of the dialogue was later enhanced with a voice-over, which really tells you something about the sound quality of this picture. Not only did the actors and actresses do a mediocre job of physical acting, but because they had to voice-dug later, they seemed way too tired to even put effort or character into their voice. You have some okay acting by Lana Parrilla, Josh Green and Nick Swarts, who all did an okay job trying to devote themselves to their characters. However, Oliver Macready, Mark Phelan and Mark Totty, did not do a good job at all, both physical and oral. About half way into the movie I said to myself, in a sarcastic remark, "Wow! This movie has some top notch, brilliant acting." It just seemed like these guys were not that involved with the project, so they didn't put much effort into their characters.What I noticed, almost right away, was the sort of X-Files theme that this movie incorporated into its plot. You have numerous, and almost brilliantly subtle, references to the Men in Black, evidenced by Agent Grey and Murphy. There was a brilliant parody of Area 51, though in this movie it goes by the name of Area 21. The heroine of this movie is a conspiracy theorist and believes in the existence of extraterrestrial beings, while her male co-workers are skeptical, again an X-Files reference with switched genders. There are alien cameos an even a disturbing scene of a frozen astronaut that is wearing an Apollo 18 badge; for some reason that scene creeps me out. It's easy to see where they got their inspiration for this kind of movie and I think it was really well done.Overall, this movie is loaded with some great spectacular make-up and gore effects that are worthy of viewing and a great harbor for conspiracies. Though what drug this movie down for me was the unbelievable bad acting and voice-overs as well as a plot line that has been used over and over again, it's become cliché. However, because there are two wrongs and two rights, this movie gets an honorable average rating. I would recommend this movie to any kind of horror fan simply so that you can say that you've seen it. Because if you haven't, then I'll be shocked, it's the kind of horror movie that you should see once and respect it for trying but certainly not honor. I would strongly recommend this movie to anybody who loves cult classics too. As for me, I really only need to see it once and my whole 20-time campaign still baffles me today.

I think most people who have commented on this movie have watched it with the wrong attitude. Get real; What do you expect from a flick blatantly named "Spiders", apparently featuring some generic monstrous arachnid creatures wreaking havoc on people? Unless you're an easily amused teenager with poor judgment, you instinctively steer clear from these kinds of pictures when looking for chills and thrills. There are quality films that offer just that.I thought I was about to watch a really bad movie, with unintentionally comedic elements and worthless cast, storyline and directing. I was wrong. This movie quickly reveals it's true nature for the perceptive. Taking for granted that the movie was "bad" on purpose, I could actually appreciate the cheesy dialog and all the self-irony that it displays. The characters make illogical decisions, use stupid reasoning and don't try to take themselves seriously. The way in which the plot unfolds and how the main characters figure it out is an obvious parody of the genre, and there are so many details which contribute to that feeling in the dialog and some of the scenes; a guy holding the spider's teeth like bull's horns, making DNA-enhanced mutant spiders from hell seem like a an ordinary casual case of lively struggle, quotes like "This is so creepy. Its like a bad sci-fi movie." and "I mean what the hell is this place?" -"I don't care what this place is, what the f-ck are *we* doing here?" etc. made me at least chuckle at times, because they often raise valid points regarding the absurd setting of the film, and do it with subtlety.The CGI was decent at times, yet laughable in some parts (especially when the spider was running around walls etc). The spider looks gory enough in close shots. The physical webs are composed of thin rope and you can see the knots tying together the intersections, which to me was a funny detail (c'mon, they could have easily avoided that, would they had cared for realism).The pacing is fine; There is enough action to keep the viewer at least semi-entertained, assuming they can appreciate other aspects of the film also (I'm not a big fan of "irrational abominable creature vs. bunch of dumb people" films).All in all, this is definitely not a serious movie, so you should not watch it as one. If you are in a humourless mood looking for some horror, then this movie will probably only make you angry. As a compensation for all the bad ratings this movie has received on IMDb, I have to give it 8/10. I'd dare to say it is more self-aware and intelligent than most people realize.

Starting off as a tense and reasonably scary movie, in the end it just gets, as simply as possible, stupid. The movie starts off with three nerds who decides to sneak into nowhere for some reason, and then a space craft hits the ground (when I say space craft, I mean a cheap 99p rocket bought from the Early Learning Centre) and they see a mutated crew member who was impregnated with a spider, which was mutated by, yes, you guessed it. Radiation. Original. Chumps. Then, the 3 members of geek-squad somehow get inside an underground base, and the spider hatches out of the crew member who they found in the shuttle. (Don't worry Alien fans, the spider crawls out of the mouth, not the highly original chest-burster.) Then you get to the part where the thing starts to chase everyone around, killing for no reason what-so-ever, and slowly, the scary-o-meter (1 being tellitubie scary, 9 being Alien and 10 being Napoleon Dynamite) drops from 5 to 4, and eventually, the main evil guy gets impregnated. The geek squad falls from 3 to 1 (you can guess which one survives from the very start) and once the last geek-member escapes with her new friend, the scary-o-meter goes from 4 to 2. Once outside, they both bump into the evil guy, who some how managed to break away from being completely wrapped in web and from the spiders layer and never tells us how, and he blows up to reveal a medium sized spider(think of Eight Legged Freaks spiders, but a bit smaller) and now the scary-o-meter reaches -4. As soon as the spider is on the loose, the two "heroes" go outside to see the helicopter that the evil guy was on, just parked in car park with people just walking past it, despite having a top-of-the-range bazooka with live ammunition on the back seat, which has no door what-so-ever, and the keys miraculously still in the ignition. Then, they fly over the city and an anti-climax follows where the spider gets blown up and then the film immediately finishes when everyone goes "yay".What really lets the movie down is that it thinks it can be a comedy/horror/action film all in one, a mixture that takes a master of a director to get over, this film would only be really good if Spielberg would have trouble of doing this piece of garbage. The actors are totally uninspiring, and in one scene, the woman geek's hair style changes when shes in a lift.Therefore, I would like to end this review on this final note:Thank the lord I bought this for only £1.99