Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

Eight Legged Freaks (2002)
Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
http://www.ultimate-movie.com/

Starring David Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, Scott Terra, Scarlett Johansson, Doug E. Doug, Rick Overton, Leon Rippy.

Directed by Ellory Elkayem.

Rated PG-13.

"It's a spider, man!" Eight Legged Freaks is neither interesting nor particularly silly, a movie with the unfortunate fate of being stuck between two genres, never wholly committing to either one and never grabbing our interest. It takes the nonsensical, if lately popular, approach of attempting to recreate the feel of a 1950s sci-fi B-movie using a hefty CGI budget and all the latest creature feature technology. The result is wildly inconsistent, bland and not much fun, with little evident thought invested in either the humor or the action. This, after the trailer made Eight Legged Freaks one of my most anticipated movies of the year simply by showing David Arquette frantically climbing a tower and shouting the invective of the title at the arachnids below.

The movie is simply about a sleepy Arizona town being overrun by giant mutated spiders. There doesn't seem to be much one could do to screw up such a magically delicious premise, but wait. Arquette plays Chris McCormack, a miner's boy who returns to the town of Prosperity, Arizona (!) to tie up some loose ends. Kari Wuhrer (Kissing a Fool) plays Samantha Parker, the hottest sherriff in the history of police departments, destined to become McCormack's love interest by the film's end.

The first half of the film has Parker, and occasionally McCormack investigating weird goings-on in their town. When they catch a glimpse of the behemoth spiders and realize there are too many for them to shoot, they gather the town's populace and barricade themselves in the seldom-used mall, built by the sleazy mayor (Leon Rippy) for a quick buck. There is, of course, a goofy black conspiracy theorist among their ranks (Doug E. Doug) as well as a smart-ass kid and a dumb-ass deputy. Who dies first?

First, the positive: Eight Legged Freaks boasts a bizarre, wonderful musical score by John Ottman, the grandiose, oddly upbeat compositions giving the spider attacks they accompany an occasional sense of gleeful, anarchic B-movie fun. The movie itself, unfortunately, doesn't cooperate. It goes to some effort to establish Prosperity, Arizona's many vivid personalities, but it doesn't do a very good job; the characters are neither realistic nor entertainingly quirky, and it becomes a drag to watch essentially every scene that has dialogue.

When we finally reach some of the big-time Arac Attack scenes (Arac Attack, incidentally, was the movie's title before they decided to go with the more colorful Eight Legged Freaks), we're shocked to discover how dull and unimaginative they turn out to be. The problem, I think, is that director Ellory Elkayem can't muster the technical proficiency to make his film suspenseful in the conventional sense and doesn't want to go too far towards the weird and over-the-top for fear of embarrassment on his feature debut. Predictably, the scenes just sit there on the screen and we watch them as nothing more than a curiosity, finding ourselves unable to either laugh or slide towards the edge of our seats.

Since the movie fails on its own merits, I suppose it would be irrelevant to mention the pointlessness of the exercise in which Elkayem, and a group of other modern filmmakers, are engaging. The god-awful special effects of the "so-bad-they're-good" sci-fi movies from the 1950's were integral to their charm. Perhaps I have simply missed something, but I don't understand how one can expect to recreate the feel of those films with state-of-the-art CGI. You can try to simulate the atmosphere, the dialogue, the characters, the cornball conflicts, but when those hyper-realistic giant spiders make an appearance, everything comes crashing down. Eight Legged Freaks belongs in neither millenium.

Grade: C-

Up Next: Austin Powers in Goldmember

©2002 Eugene Novikov

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X-RT-RatingText: C-