Eight Legged Freaks
**
Cinema Releases - August 9, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. USA.
99 minutes. Directed by Ellory Elkayem. Written by Ellory Elkayem, Jesse
Alexander; from a story by Ellory Elkayem, Randy Kornfield. Starring David
Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, Scott Terra, Scarlett Johansson, Doug E. Doug, Rick
Overton, Leon Rippy, Jay Arlen Jones, Eileen Ryan.
So I went ahead and got my hopes up, figuring
that "Eight Legged Freaks" could not go wrong. I mean... it
features giant spiders. The supporting cast includes Scarlett Johansson.
The title is pretty darn great, and the trailer was loud and brash, with
the right sense of largesse and campy fun.
This is a modern-day B-movie in which the small
mining town of Prosperity, Arizona is victim to an oil spill that infects
river insects and causes the spiders that eat them to turn big. I'm talkin'
real big. The size of five men, at least. They could bite your head off.
Even Steve Irwin would be scared.
Before the residents of Prosperity realise their
town is being overrun, however, there are of course the obligatory squabbles
about whether to sell property to developers and whether community spirit
is what it used to be. The movie makes noble stabs at attempting to kid around
by way of its characters: David Arquette appears in that stupid moustache
he wore in "Scream 2", and everyone tells him how much he looks like a rodent.
The town sheriff (Kari Wuhrer) and her daughter (Scarlett Johansson) do little
but moan in throaty voices and pose in tight T-shirts, as if they know their
purpose is to be eye candy. Good old Doug E. Doug appears as the town loony,
a jive conspiracy theorist who loudly rambles left-wing paranoia about imminent
alien invasions on a radio show that's surprisingly popular among the
townfolk.
Eventually comes the climax, in which people hurtle
into the mall as if inspired by "Dawn of the Dead", and load up with shotguns
to defend themselves against arachnid sunsabitches. These attack scenes are
pretty terrific; the picture's energy level cranks up, the cutting goes nuts,
and hundreds of obscenely massive creatures scurry around causing havoc.
The enormo-spiders have exactly the right presence; they look dimensional
yet just a little too bright, and under their breath they make amusingly
ridiculous munching and squirming sounds. When my dream project "Zombie Ninja
Octopus Lesbians" gets off the ground, I'm gonna call in the special effects
guys who worked on this.
Where "Eight Legged Freaks" fails is in its hour
of introduction. The townspeople are not funny; they're boring. Arquette
is flat and irritating, and the screenplay is not able to change that by
having other people tell him so. Wuhrer and Johansson have nothing to do,
and are photographed in such uninspired, fleeting shots that I found it
frustratingly difficult to gawp at them. Doug's character is well-written
and cutely played, but fails to engage; he's shot with just a little too
much distance, and as a result his scenes lack rhythm or
buoyancy.
Perhaps this is an unfair comparison, because
it was more intent on being a satirical anthology than a monster flick, but
I kept thinking back to Joe Dante's "Gremlins" (1984). If "Eight Legged Freaks"
had even a tenth of that picture's life or intelligence, I would have had
a lot more fun.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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