Big Ass Spider!

I saw this film at the Imagine film festival 2013 in Amsterdam. The plot is straightforward and simple: An alien spider that was planted in a human body, escapes from the hospital where the human was treated. The military takes over the hospital but fails miserably to contain the menace, in spite of showcasing an assortment of weapons and heavily decorated brass. A professional exterminator (Alex) and his volunteer helper (Jose) take over where the military falls short, and simultaneously take care of many hilarious moments that turn this film into an entertaining production, and let us overlook several of its faults.

The spider in question quadruples in size every four hours. In the beginning of the story, the spider was a bit scary while it had a believable size. At first, it traversed the facility tubes of the hospital and could turn up anywhere in the building. Later on, it used the sewer system of the city while moving to a suitable location to plant eggs. But when it started growing exponentially, it became more of a predator (like a lion or a tiger), thereby loosing most of its scariness inherent to crawling insects. Still fierceful, of course, but not in a way fitting in the Horror genre.

The exterminator duo, professional Alex with volunteer Jose, takes care of the humorous aspects, while the rest of the cast is one-dimensional entourage. Some of the military, the general and lieutenant Kelly, show more than one dimension in sparse better moments. The general is unexpectedly flexible in allowing help from outside the army, at moments when he considers himself powerless, in spite of all the guns and gadgets under his command. Lieutenant Kelly sticks to her role as someone who has everything under control (famous quote: "it's my job"). We see that events in this unusual case evidently outgrow her training and eventually overpower her, after which she gets an important role as the maiden in distress, with Alex as the obvious knight to rescue her by whatever unorthodox means.

All in all, we talk about family entertainment here. The label SciFi (IMDb) is not very appropriate, in my opinion. Instead, the Imagine festival website did it better with "Horror – Comedy". The exterminator duo (Alex and Jose) turn this movie into something interesting. Without them there is not much left to admire; not even the animated spider leaves an impression on us. With its 80 minutes running time, this movie is not too long for its minimal contents and yet succeeds in keeping our attention.

BIG ASS SPIDER! is the story of exterminator, Alex Mathis (Greg Grunberg) and his extraordinary day. Upon receiving a bite from a Brown Recluse spider, Mathis winds up in the hospital. While he's there, by some unholy happenstance, another species of spider, a particularly large specimen, crawls forth. In seconds, the angry arachnid is on a deadly rampage!

If that's not bad enough, the military shows up, led by Maj. Tanner (Ray Wise), to "take care of things". The hospital is quickly locked down, and it's obvious that this is no ordinary spider. Can Mathis use his bug-killing skills to assist in the eradication of this fast-growing monster?

Grunberg is fantastic in his nebbish cum hero role. The movie is an excellent blend of sci-fi horror / creature feature and comedy. Not as hopelessly "zany" as one might expect, it benefits from well-written humor. The CGI isn't bad, especially later in the movie, when the BAS goes "KING KONG".

A low budget film that makes the best of its limited funds...

Big Ass Spider/Mega Spider could have gone either way. It could have been cheap, terribly written and acted and amateurish or it could have been entertaining and likable with a sense that it knows what it wants to be and who it's aimed at. Thankfully while it does have a fair share of flaws Big Ass Spider/Mega Spider belongs in the latter category. The locations are splendidly colourful and atmospheric and the movie is well shot and reasonably edited as well as efficiently and confidently directed. The spider however is a little inconsistent, never terrible but never exceptional at the same time, at points it's menacing and well-designed and at other points it's rather goofy-looking and over-proportioned for an intentionally huge spider. It does at least have a personality and is well used. The music has the right amount of groove and eeriness without feeling out of place and the movie is better than expected in terms of writing. A lot of the supporting cast have very little to do but the writing for Alex and Jose is brilliant, from the hilarious snappy banter to the endearing tongue-in-cheek humour, if there was a choice who fared a little better than the other it would be Jose. The story admittedly does next to nothing new with the concept it has and it is very stretched out in places but it avoids being too campy and it takes an earnest approach without taking it too seriously, considering the concept that is difficult to pull off and the movie makes a decent crack at it. It's never scary but there are some inventive and suspenseful attacks that stops Big Ass Spider/Mega Spider from being too much of one tone, and as acknowledged early on in the review the movie does know who its audience is and what tone it's trying to take, never trying to take on too many ideas or be too simplistic. The characters are a mixed bag, Alex and Jose carry the movie wonderfully and are likable but a lot of the rest of the characters are one-dimensional and annoying. Likewise with the cast, with the best being the likable if goofy Greg Grunberg and the often hysterical Lombardo Boyer. Lin Shaye is amusing if occasionally wooden and Ray Wise is also good. Clare Kramer is laughably bad however with her change from cold to damsel far too sudden while the rest of the cast do nothing with their already thinly-sketched characters and that's including the underused Patrick Bauchau. The ending takes ridiculous to a whole new level as well. In conclusion, not great but still a lot of fun. Oh and the intro is wonderful. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Alex (Greg Grunberg) is an exterminator working in Los Angeles, whose speciality is spiders – he can get inside their minds, you see. A minor spider bite sends him to the local emergency room, where he soon learns that something has infiltrated the place. Turns out there was a military "accident" and soon the hospital is taken over by a Special Forces Major (Ray Wise) and his crew, including lovely Carly (Clare Kramer). But it is up to Alex and his sidekick, hospital security guard Jose (Lombardo Boyar) to figure out how to save the day.... Really, a movie like this needs no description, as it says it all in the title – there's a Big-Ass Spider threatening downtown LA! Very funny, a little gory (but only very briefly), this film had rather more character development than I'd expect in an 85-minute popcorn movie – and it was a perfect film to see with the great FantAsia audience too!

"Big Ass Spider" is a reasonably entertaining B-Movie that neither takes itself too seriously nor insults your intelligence (except with your permission). If you like this kind of comedy/horror/monster movie at all, you'll enjoy yourself here. It's not Shakespeare; then again, that's not what it said on the box. And you opened it anyway.

You could compare it to a Syfy original; it's in that genre. But it's better than all than about three of them, and that's including "Sharknado." Not like BAS is genius, but Syfy movies are… not good.

It does what a B is supposed to do: entertain, divert, scare a little, clown around. Decent job. A perfect NetFlix weeknight movie; even Saturday night, if you're not doing anything.