Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

Directed by Ellory Elkayem
Written by Jesse Alexander and Elkayem, based on a story by Elkayem and Randy Kornfield
Starring David Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, Scott Terra, Scarlett Johansson, Doug E. Doug

My Advice: Wait and Rent It.

Mike (Terra) is a bright kid. He's got a creepy friend who runs an exotic spider farm, though. And this friend, Joshua, has been feeding his wards crickets from a particular pond nearby. For some reason, this choice of food makes the little arachnothings grow like mad. Unfortunately, the reason for this is revealed to be a clandestine toxic waste dumping that's occurred in the pond. Which means nothing but bad news for Joshua, for Mike, for Mike's mom--the sheriff (Wuhrer) and Mike's mom's old flame (Arquette) who's just come back into town to try and save the local mines from shutting down.

It's easy for a monster movie to become a guilty pleasure. Unfortunately, in this day and age, it's also easy for a pic like that to slide down into MST3K Hell. Luckily, this film falls somewhere in the spectrum between Tremors and the lamentable Bats. Somewhere in the median between, actually, since it's not as adept or smooth as its graboid-destroying compatriot.

As with most of these things, where it suffers most is the story. It starts off slow, introducing everybody in the town, all potential spider food. Then as people start to die off it almost becomes pat--person finds him or herself alone, more than likely they're arachno-chow. However, the film almost becomes a novel entry into its subgenre with probably its most original sequence: giant jumping spiders running down kids on motorbikes. Brutal and almost exhilirating, it's a helluva fun scene. But then you have the same old characters making the same old stupid mistakes, and it's hard to get the momentum back up. So many chances for some real innovation in the big monster genre and they get wasted one by one. Even some of the jokes aren't setup properly and thus lose impact.

Which is a shame, because the cast is actually up to the task. Rather than wink wryly at the camera, they're going for broke. Of the cast, probably Wuhrer would be the standout since she seems to know her way around a shotgun quite well. The effects are pretty spiffy too. When you've got giant spiders breaking things and chomping down on people, it's hard to go wrong. Although, now that I think of it: they did go wrong--there are only three major types of spiders that appear (and one damn big tarantula). I can only suspect that it's budgetary concerns that kept that down, which is a shame because of all the neat things a giant brown recluse could do...or a giant spitting spider. Gah, it's easy to think. But oh well.

Suffice to say, if you're a monster movie fanatic, this might be worth seeing on the big screen, but make sure you do so at a discounted showing. For everyone else, though, it won't hurt to grab as a rental. It's worth a few chuckles.