Itsy Bitsy

If you're not afraid of spiders, this movie will probably not be scary at all to you. I'm an avid fan of horrors and have become desensitized over the years but always looking for something different and always looking for gore. For me this movie really could have been made as a short. There is nothing horror about the first hour of this movie. I was settling on 4 stars until I saw the last 20 minutes and it made up for the bore the first hour gave me.

ITSY BITSY begins with a tribal ritual, where a black, earthen jar / container is stolen by desperate men. The scene shifts to a mother (Elizabeth Roberts) and her two kids relocating to her new job in a new town. She will be providing in-home care for an elderly collector of tribal artifacts (Bruce Davison- WILLARD), who just happens to have received said container.

As more is learned about the sacred pottery, it becomes clear that something terrible is brewing. When it is broken, the horror is unleashed.

Two things can be said up front: #1- Arachnophobes will utterly hate this movie! #2- Monster / practical effects fans will absolutely love it!

The complaints about the "family drama" aspect of the movie are unfounded. Any such drama is just a necessary part of the overall story, unless we only want a pointless series of jump scares. The movie also has its own mythology, explaining the significance of the creature. A solid monster movie with some creepy moments.

Denise Crosby co-stars as Sheriff Jane Dunne...

This was more like a dark family drama with a subplot involving a big ancient spider.

I felt it was very drawn out, we get it the mother has a addiction, and has flashbacks - they overly repeated this and really it had nothing to do with the plot, the mother seemed to really neglect these kids, I felt the spider was the least of their worries.

anyways I was hoping there would of been a special way to defeat the spider (like get help from the tribe or the artifact), but blah it focused more on the drama and trauma rather then the spider which was well done but only a short part of the movie.

it should have been called 'just a itsy bitsy addiction

4/10

Let me start by saying that, based on the trailer and poster, I kind of thought this would be more of a tongue in cheek, icky spider killing romp. Instead, Itsy Bitsy feels like a spider slasher flick with a whole lot of family drama instead of teens scared in the woods. While it has its moments, the film suffers from simply not enough slashing. There's hints, glimpses, quick cuts, and teases, but there just isn't enough spider slashing happening here. The audience knows what is eventually coming, and that's largely why we're watching: we want to see this gross, huge spider poison and spider web cocoon people to death!

Unfortunately it's a bit of a slog sitting through the family drama that makes up a large portion of the film (almost all of it). That and the ancient mythology behind the spider's existence just feels boring. Itsy Bitsy is well made with decent performances. But when you see a giant spider in act one, you're really just waiting to see it go off in act three. And instead of a bang, Itsy Bitsy just shoots blanks.