SPIDERS (2000) - The X-Files meets a 50's monster movie.

DIRECTED by Gary Jones.

SCREENPLAY by Boaz Davidson, Steven David Brooks, Jack Anderson & Adam Gierasch. (I can't believe it took four people to write this, its hardly an original concept or complex storyline- this must be some kind of record.)

STARRING  - Lana Parilla as Marci Eyre,  Josh Green as John Murphy,  Oliver Macready as Slick,  Nick Swarts as Jake,  Mark Phelan as Agent Gray,  Mark Totty as Commander Hooper.

PLOT - A NASA space shuttle crashes to Earth after an experiment where spiders are injected with alien DNA goes horribly wrong. A female reporter - Marci and her two colleagues Slick and Jake are on hand to witness the crash and break into the downed shuttle before the authorities arrive.

Inside the shuttle they find the lone survivor, he appears to be infected with some strange contagion and very soon a spider hatches from within his body, killing him instantly.

Marci and her friends are captured by a shadowy government agency who are looking to cover up the incident but soon the government facility they are being held in is overran with giant mutated spiders.

Soon Marci finds herself alone, hunted by spider and human alike, teaming up with a rogue agent called John Murphy, she must escape from the deadly spiders and expose the story of a lifetime. But first she must find a way to destroy the gigantic queen spider...the gigantic queen spider that is about to attack a nearby city and it's unsuspecting population...

DIALOUGE  - Jake - "This is creepy...like a bad science fiction movie." (Well...you said it, mate...)

PERFORMANCES  - The films central character is Marci played by Lana Parilla. Marci is a plucky young trainee journalist constantly at odds with her boss and always looking for a good story. Marci has a particular interest in aliens and UFO's and is determined to expose a conspiracy regarding the government covering up the existence of extraterrestrials. Basically she's a cross between Fox Mulder and Lois Lane. Parilla makes this potentially stereotypical character believable somehow and gives a generally decent performance, giving Marci an air of enthusiasm and toughness. 

Josh Green plays John Murphy, the agent who teams up with Marci in the second half of the film. Initially John is a reliable and conscientious young agent, obedient and loyal to his commanding officers. As the story progresses he becomes sickened by what he sees and refuses to kill Marci, instead opting to work with her. Green plays Murphy as a typical man of action but gives him a slightly niave edge, he seems like he's just come straight out of the academy and comes across as competent but also inexperienced. He's a bit two dimensional if I'm being honest, but seeing as most of the characters in this film are similarly painted in broad strokes, the blame can't really be placed upon Green who does his best with what he's given.

The villain of the piece is Agent Gray as played by Mark Phelan. Gray is Murphy's senior officer and is a ruthlessly pragmatic figure. To Gray the completion of his mission is all that matters and whoever gets in his way usually ends up dying horribly. Phelan gives probably the best performance in the film, his character is still two dimensional but he makes a good villain. Phelan gives a steely eyed, cold performance whilst at the same time chewing the scenery, he's clearly enjoying himself in the part and like all good baddies he gets his comeuppance in the end.

SFX - For a film with such a low budget, the effects are surprisingly decent and even more surprisingly they've held up OK and not aged too badly. There are some nice practical effects when a spider emerges from the mouth of the infected astronaut. It stretches the astronaut's mouth open unnaturally wide and crawls up from his stomach and out of his mouth. I could imagine this scene making those suffering from arachnophobia feel very queasy...

We also get some decent CGI giant spiders. Considering this film was made in the year 2000 when CGI was still in its infancy and on a low budget to boot, the giant spiders hold up pretty well all told. They haven't got that PlayStation One cutscene feel to them like a lot of CGI at the time had. They actually manage to look like solid physical objects rather than wire frame computer graphics floating across the screen. I suspect its mainly down to the use of judicious cutting interspersed with practical spider body part props for the close ups that achieves this. Its really only in the very final scene where the spider is on top of a building that the CGI starts to look a bit ropey, by then its so near to the end that you don't care anyway.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - This film contains a good mixture of gross out body horror (the astronaut "giving birth" to the spider) and more conventional violence (shootings, beatings etc.). You even see somebody get eaten by a spider at one point whilst trapped in the spider's web...

This scene is only let down by the terrible CGI blood on the spider's web, the blood seems to float above the web and it looks both cheap and ridiculous. It's bizzare that the smallest (and what should have been easiest) bit of CGI work to pull off fails so dismally considering the relatively high standard on show in the rest of the film.

Theres a really good moment when Agent Gray meets his end. Infected by the spiders he literally starts to turn into one, he spouts spider legs out of his back and then literally explodes as the spider queen bursts out of his body...

There perhaps should have been a little bit more blood considering what's just happened but it's a nice moment all the same.

RATING  - If you're looking for a film with subtle characters, deep themes and lots of artistic merit then Spiders isn't for you. If however, you're looking for a fast paced bit of fun then give this a go. It's got cheesy dialogue, hammy performances and clichéd characters but its also got a good atmosphere and some nice effects work. It's not very often that I big up a film for it's CGI work but here it works nicely. It has aged if not quite like a fine wine, then at least like a decent, cheap supermarket beer. This film also has a very 90's feel to it, with its UFO obsessed central character and her search for "the truth" it's definitely got that X-Files ambience about it. It could almost be an episode of the series albeit with a slightly bigger budget and different actors.

Overall I'm giving this 3 and a half mutant arachnids out of 5.