Spider from the Attic

"Spider In The Attic" is the sort of film that makes you think, "Wow, this could've been so good." The premise? A scientist gene-splicing killer spiders at home - the kind of mad scientist scenario that screams late-night B-movie goodness. But somewhere along the way, the execution gets tangled in its own web. The story? A meandering mess of pseudo-science and missed potential, where the only thing scarier than the spiders is the lack of coherent plot. It's a slow, painful crawl through a quagmire of lazy writing, with characters that are as engaging as a bag of flour.

The director, bless him, tries valiantly to infuse some atmosphere, with shadowy scenes and an occasional CGI spider that looks decent but could've used a little more menace. Unfortunately, the sound design is so over-the-top that when one spider scuttles up a wall, you'd swear a herd of elephants was on the loose. There's no tension to be found, only a sense of utter tedium that even a toxic spider bite couldn't cure.

Performances are fine - familiar faces from the B-movie circuit, doing their best with what they've got. But no amount of solid acting could save this sluggish, arachnid-infested snooze fest. Skip it and go watch Arachnophobia again.

A spider is creepy because it's creepy. The makers did not realize that a spider is a winning team already. They have tried to make the spiders more creepy. As a result the spiders became laughable. Haha.

The actors are doing their best with what they got, and the script throw in some real world problems to make us like the characters.

However, they have no idea on how to write characters in crisis, and that make everyone behave like.

We have a situation where we have a big deadly animal in a house we are in - what to do next ?

Well, they make all stupid choices from there on and with that all sympathy for the characters goes out the window.

Then we have the CGI. Someone saw that and thought it was ok ?

We are talking 2001 PS2 CGI here.

I however liked the ending.

I would really like a sequel with bigger budget taking off from there...

I only write reviews when absolutely compelled. My sorrow goes out to the actors because they all showed potential and were likeable/dis-likeable based on their roles. I would have given them more points but someone needed to smack the directors and scream "Seriously, Come on, please let me act, give me a real line." Unfortunately, they were directed to say the dumbest/worst lines possible throughout the movie and were not allowed to act out the scenes with any realism. Example: Lots of men and women lose their minds/wits when they see just one tiny spider. Here are half a dozen women who barely react when they see creatures which resemble giant spiders with tails and teeth. If you decide to watch, it will be painful as you will see the actors make the exact opposite decision even the most idiotic person would have handled better in every possible scenario. We are all used to seeing the one or two actors in the script required to die for a good scare or because they are the villains; however, when all of the actors repeatedly make dumb decisions, over and over, from beginning to end, it makes you realize it's not the actors fault. There was one rediculous sequencing error where one of the lead actors saw a spider the size of a 40lb dog and then never mentioned to the other actors, instead she went on as if the only spider in the house was the one in a glass aquarium which was 25% the size. One of the worst directed movies I've seen, lots of wasted potential even with the limited CGI.

I suffer from arachnophobia and this movie gave the the willies a bit. Mostly the HUGE cobwebs that none of the actors seem to notice. LOL The FX weren't great and I don't know if that was a spider or a scorpion or a bat???

The story could have been interesting, but the writing was dull filled with STUPID character actions and the acting was horrific and the ending was beyond lame. Maybe you fans of BAD Schlocky horror will enjoy watching and laughing at this movie. But if your a serious horror fan, then just PASS on this, cause it really has no BITE! :(