Best movie of this year hands down!

Wow! Such a good movie.

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

'This is...like a bad science fiction movie'I was expecting this to be absolute rubbish, so imagine my surprise when I found the first half hour of this movie intriguingly watchable with the majority of problems being poor dialogue...but no worries, then the spiders appear! I breathed a sigh of relief as I could begin to laugh at the shoddy effects and all-too-pathetic deaths thrown in amongst a myriad of plot-holes that I literally can't even begin to pick up on. This was a monster movie that should have known it wasn't going to be good, which made it more disappointing when it seems that the director here was thinking they had the next 'Alien' franchise on their hands. An all too serious movie that should have taken the mick out of itself a LOT more.1/10(Will I watch 'Spiders 2'? Probably yeah.)

I watched this movie for one reason and one reason only: Lana flawless Parrilla. Obviously my expectations were very low because I knew it was going to be crap, which it was. Lana herself has called the movie "embarrassing." And, let's be honest, she's come a LONG way acting-wise since then (she has the ALMA Award, a hit show, and hundreds of thousands of Evil Regals to prove it). I mean, I still can't wrap my brain around the fact that the dorky, spunky kid with glasses is now the Evil Queen. Anyway, I digress...Overall, NOT a film you should get into if you're looking for something thought-provoking and deeply emotional with award-winning performances that leave you breathless. If you are, you're going to be disappointed very quickly. However, it's quite enjoyable if you're looking for something mindless and cheesy to laugh at. This movie wasn't really even meant to be taken seriously, which makes it even better. So, a great flick if you wanna kill time and have a little fun. Although, I'm laughing so hard at the person in an old review who said, "Lana who? Don't worry, nobody knows who she is!" That's both hilarious and ironic.

In this sad day an age the creature feature is a much devalued beast. I don't know exactly when the crunch point came or which film marked it, but there was undoubtedly a turning point, terrible and seemingly hard to resist where directors realised they didn't need animatronics, any practical work or even imagination and could just rely on farming out a couple of pissant drawings to the cheapest available CGI animators and spunk the results on screen without a care for the quality. As a chump raised on vintage monster films it annoys the heck out of me, so I'm all the more pleased when I see a creature feature that doesn't suck donkey junk. In this way, Spiders gave me a good deal of pleasure. Taking a blessedly ludicrous turn of events as its set up, it contrives after a short build to have three college students out and about in a secret military facility when a deadly mutant spider gets loose. The execution is fairly solid, director Gary Jones knows his way around this kind of film he made near classic Mosquito in the 90's) and although the pacing has a few blips the action has verve. Acting is generic but entertaining, Lana Parilla is fun as the daft but spunky heroine while Oliver Macready and Jake Swarts hold up their end enthusiastically enough as her companions. Mark Phelan gets most credit though as he villain of the piece, he act up a storm and gives loopy good value. The neatest things about the film are its effects and writing though, the writing in particular. It was co-written by Adam Gierasch and Jace Anderson, a prolific partnership who love horror and come across as rather nice people but tend to be a bit rubbish when writing anything other than the most mindless of trash (key examples of their ineptitude being Mother of Tears and Mortuary) . Here they are in their element (as they were working on the great Crocodile 2: Death Roll), the writing in this one never takes itself too seriously and is frequently rather amusing, both intentionally and otherwise. No one really comes across as a realistic human being and the whole thing is hardly Faulkner as far as movie scripts go, but its constantly lively and good fun. The effects were done by the KNB team (the practical ones at least) and there isn't too much CGI, as a result there are some pretty cool scenes, a couple of nifty kills and some effectively nasty after the fact corpses. The spider is an effective antagonist as well, sweetly designed and popping out for jump scares to good effect. The film did need more gore and a bit of adjustment during some scenes, but wipes away most complaints with a hysterically crazy and hence near brilliant climax, pushing it comfortably into the realms of guilty pleasure humdingery. TC says check this sucker out...

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.