Big spider movies are apparently the thing, as both this film and Infested came out around the same time, and I remember seeing the trailer for one of them and it felt very Arachnophobia-ish (the benchmark for killer spider movies). Now that I’ve seen Infested, I guess it’s time to watch this one.
Synopsis:
After raising an unnervingly talented spider in secret, 12-year-old Charlotte must face the facts about her pet-and fight for her family’s survival-when the once-charming creature rapidly transforms into a giant, flesh-eating monster.
IMDb: 5.8
Rotten Tomatoes: 68%
Tagline: Your biggest fear just got bigger.
Kiah Roache-Turner (Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, Wyrmwood: Apocalypse) wrote and directed this Australian film. The film grossed $1.6M at the worldwide box office.
The film starts off a bit overly dramatic in its jerky camerawork and goofy in nature, as we make fun of an elderly woman who obviously has dementia and keeps calling out exterminators. Jermaine Fowler (Coming 2 America, The Blackening), the most recognizable actor in the film, is killed off quickly (or is he?), and I’m truly unsure if this is a comedy or horror. The tone seems to be on the lighthearted side, but there are already some decent gore and kills.
The film has heart, though, and characters we care about. And the music really adds to it, filling the blank spaces with sounds of wonder and mystery mixed with youthful exuberance. There are hints of adventure, terror, and fun. It’s a very nice soundtrack.
It just seems odd because it really FEELS like a family film, much in the vein of Arachnophobia. And yet it’s rated R. Did I mention that? It’s all based on the gore and violence as well as a few instances of the “f” word, but it just doesn’t fit with the feel of the movie. It’s like if The Goonies was rated R. Who would you market it to?
Somewhere around the one-hour mark, it DOES get a little dark and the tone shifts from the lighthearted nature to more of an Xtro-feel of a film. And that’s saying a lot, because that film is all kinds of fucked up.
While our central core family is very well written with wonderful characters, the periphery characters are more than a bit odd. It’s as if the director went out of his way to include every zany neighbor he has ever had in his life. They’re weird for the sake of being weird. Very one dimensional and kooky. But the film has a nice color palette and there are some great sequences with style. It’s very much a passion project, and you can feel it come off the screen.
With that said, there are plenty of parts that will make you squirm and squeal. If you hate spiders like I do, your skin will most definitely crawl. And the effects this thing has on you after a bite is horrific. It can get disturbing at points.
Not to mention, a lot of it is far-fetched in terms of communicating with the spider and the pace at which it grows. I get this is fantasy, but it needs to be grounded in reality. And I think that’s where Arachnophobia excelled. I believed it. This tends to take me out of the film a bit when it goes all out for the “what-the-fuckery?”
It’s a fun film. It’s not exactly memorable, nor does it stand out in the genre. It’s quirky and odd but has its creepy crawly moments. The oddball characters, the uneven tone, and the lapses in believability tend to take this down a few notches, but it still doesn’t detract from the fact that the film is worth a watch.
