Very Cool!!!

Excellent, smart action film.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie category for this is Incorrect, it is a 'Comedy, horror, Sci fi'--with Comedy coming firstA viewer has to get past the first 5 minutes or so, Mr. Mihm, (the guy who put this thing together along with his wife), put their son in it, and his short acting stint is pretty non believable and not funny at all, but after his character meets up with the mom, it starts to get funny, and pretty much stays that way for the rest of the movieI got a lot of chuckles out of this. A lot of times with this kind of movie it has a lot of good looking young people, and it ends up being pretty flat.This particular movie has adults for the most part, and U can tell they got a kick out of portraying their characters, and got into the spirit of the thingThoroughly enjoyable PG comedy horror movie

The main problem I have with these indie throwback tributes to the 1950s monster movie genre is that I'd much rather be watching one of the original productions rather than an indie with a struggling budget trying to do justice to the genre. That's the case with THE GIANT SPIDER, a virtual reworking of TARANTULA with some surprisingly decent, lo-fi special effects. The whole thing is shot in black and white and certainly looks the part, but the script is sub par and I found the forced humour to be unfunny; I'd much rather they simply played it straight.

I've been following Christopher R. Mihm's film career for a couple of years now, and The Giant Spider is easily the best, most accomplished film he's made. Mihm has made a career of mounting reverent homages to 50's horror/sci-fi films, and the polish of each of his films (this is his eighth!) grows with each film. The pacing, acting, special effects, directing, and technical achievement of The Giant Spider is pretty darn impressive for an independent film-maker - some stand out elements for me: The "spider" simply puts all other film beasties to shame - compare it directly with 1955's "Tarantula" and you can see how much better this one is filmed and presented. The puppetry is AMAZING! The close-up of the spider's face is really, really first rate. And the theme song has been stuck in my head for days! Love, love, love it. A film that made me laugh out loud several times (not AT it, WITH it), and left me with a great big smile. Perfect film for fans of the genre.

The acting is mediocre at best. The special effects are of varied quality. Actually, the spider scenes are for the most part handled rather well. The stock footage is horribly obvious. As for the writing and directing, well, let's just say that Chris Mihm need not worry about being nominated for any Oscar.It's quite obvious that this is a very low budget independent movie.But... it's all done with a great deal of love for the fifties "big bug" movies that it pays tribute to. If it was any slicker it just wouldn't be as much fun as it is.If you like these old films, you'll probably love The Giant Spider. I know I did.