Spiders 2 - Le retour des araignées géantes

The first "Spiders" is one of my guiltiest guilty pleasures in the horror genre, simply because that movie is just too stupid NOT to enjoy! It had grotesque special effects, featured every single cliché of the freshly revived creature-feature sub genre and it never took itself too seriously, which resulted in a fairly entertaining & campy flick. Part two regretfully is the complete opposite of all that. It tries to be scary and original, which is a pretty bad approach if you're dealing with mutated spiders that look as gigantic as a house! Despite the remotely promising opening sequences (featuring an authentic pirate attack!) and a lot of gory killings near the end, "Spiders 2" is also a very boring film and that's really unforgivable for a post-2000 horror production. The sail boat of a young couple sinks during a storm but they're rescued by a huge cargo ship. The exclusively male crew members are insufferably friendly even though it's more than obvious that they're naughty villains, especially the annoying captain of the ship and the stereotypical mad doctor with the white beard. It takes another tedious half hour before it's confirmed that the cargo ship actually is a floating research lab where the sinister scientist feeds human bodies to over-sized tarantulas. The ramshackle old cargo ship forms an interesting location, but crap-director Sam Firstenberg nearly isn't talented enough to make full use of it. The CGI-effects are atrocious, as are the acting performances and it's really pathetic to see how everyone involved in this Nu-Image production takes this thing so damn seriously.

This movie starts out good, almost like a suspense/mystery more than a horror movie. Richard Moll is great as the demented ship doctor. After the first half of the movie it starts to go downhill somewhat. The story gets predictable and the spider special effects are not too great. The majority of the CGI effects look fake and outdated, and some of the spiders are obviously tarantulas in miniature environments. But, a fairly decent sequel offering which is better than most...

During the opening sequence a guy drops a dead body in to a cage containing a giant spider. Straight after that we cut to a yacht full of teenagers in the middle of the ocean(!) as they play cards they are hi-jacked by guys in black with guns and all the girls are taken prisoner, the guys with guns then blow the yacht up with a grenade burning all the men left inside. Cut to next day and our two main characters Jason and Alexander find this yacht and stop to have a look and decide they will report it and theres nothing else they can do. Unfortunately for us and them they get caught out by a big storm and end up overboard. Luckily for them a large cargo ship turns up and saves them. But this cargo ship is not what it seems. I dont think I need to tell you the rest as you should be able to guess quite easily. I hate this film and you will too. I cant think of one good thing to say about it. The story is very slow to get going, the actors are annoying, and as for the effects they are some of the worst I have ever seen including awful computer effects, rubbish spider puppets and the film makers even have the nerve to put a normal sized spider on a model/toy boat to try to convince you that a huge spider is crawling over this cargo ship. It is never explained how the spiders grow to such large proportions or the reason why there is a cargo ship full of the things. I would have thought the director and screenwriter might have at least tried to come up with some sort of explanation, but no they couldnt be bothered. I think this movies script was written on the back of a postage stamp. Dont say I didnt Warn you. See the much better original spiders instead.

OK, there are some mad scientists entering a ship and forcing the crew and some more good scientists to experiment with spiders until they become large, blown-up rubber monsters running amok and diminishing the crew one by one until the final showdown.

What could have been a horror classic in 1931 and a trash pearl in 1961 is just a joke in 2001. You wonder how producers can do such a movie in this decade... I really like all kind of trash movies like this, but the story is to thin, the acting just wooden, with only non-screaming heroine Stephanie Niznik showing some acting abilities and sex appeal, and a really dull direction.

The worst of this movie with the great title "Spiders 2" (where have been the first spiders?) is the lack of special effect. While it's rather easy to produce great special effect with today's computer technology, you can see very special effects that where found somewhere beyond the sea probably... a stupidly looking rubber spider that has already been fighting against your Action Man figures back in the seventies, enlarged and dubbed over some ocean pictures... nonsense explosions, unrealistic and really stupid stunts, and smaller or bigger plastic spiders being dragged and pushed all around the burning ship.

You wonder if the actors and crew were on dope all the time, or if they had great fun and a big laugh doing this picture... this could be a logical explanation for this baddie that otherwise has no real reason to exist, except if you're looking for another cheap movie for a retro trash film night with your friends a some cans of lager beer, next to, let's say, Van Damme's "The Order" and "Maura's Sexual Fantasies"... in fact, all these three movies were running on German TV last weekend. Have fun!

let's see now... Spiders 2... ummm.... the special effects are just silly..... the dialogue is wooden, weird, and hard to take seriously... the mad scientist acts and talks and looks like a Saturday morning cartoon character... the story has lots of plot and logic loopholes, verging on the ridiculous....

the story is predictable and is very very very slow moving -- we can all see where it's going, so why can't the characters?

actually you could save this movie by taking out virtually all of the dialogue -- not a word of it is necessary --- then taking out redundant and unnecessary scenes -- and bringing in a better cinematographer with more knowledge about dramatic lighting. It would work okay as a silent movie, about ten or fifteen minutes long.