Spiders 2 - Le retour des araignées géantes

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.

I had read about this film in Fangoria, so I was really looking forward to seeing it and my local video store had it for rent, so I figured why not check it out. I was severely disappointed. Judging from the trailer the film had a lot going for it and I knew going into it that it was a low budget film, so I was willing to cut it some slack and even then it has real problems; the major one being the film was too ambitious for its budget and having had a better budget probably could have better than Eight Legged Freaks.

Im not going to be as rough as some reviewers are on this film, but I wouldnt recommend it. Its major fault was the SFX, which considering the title are the cornerstone of a movie like this and considering the low budget, it did some some good effects, but for every good SFX shot, there was 2 bad ones. The film had a great atmosphere in the claustrophic confines of a ship and spiders running loose but never managed to create any tension or a feeling of claustrophobia. Also why they made computer generated shots of stuff like a wrecked ship or even the cargo ship itself is beyond me, because thats some of the stuff that really looked fake esp. when they had long lingering shots. The interiors sets were believable probably because they actually filmed it on an old ship. I was really expecting some good gore in this film and it even failed on that level, the spider attacks were just consisted of their fangs impaling their victims. The major fault of the film though, which many had pointed out, was the script and even for a film like this you expect something other than ,"Spiders are Carninvores, you know that?". No kidding you mean flies and insects are vegetable matter? Are people stupid enough to believe that a cut on the neck of the lead actor that required stitches would need as much medical attention as it got in the movie? The acting was passable but still left something to be desired.

The bottom line is that this film isnt really worth your time or money and its a shame, because with a better script and more money it could have been at least entertaining sci-fi splatter film.

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.

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.

Most of the people who've seen and slated Spiders 2 have obviously never seen Spiders 1, as the sequel is practically Citizen Kane in comparison. Most of the actors do a passable job (including Richard Moll - an actor I actually recognised, the last thing you expect from a film like this), and the director even throws in some halfhearted camera tricks - brilliantly stupid shots include the heroine diving through a bit of flimsy webbing in slo-mo as if it were a plate glass window.

However, any and all attempts to build up suspense totally disintegrate when the SFX are brought into play (some of the CG shots near the end are laugh-out-loud hilarious), and, unforgivably, it also suffers from Boring Spider Deaths. It also has absolutely no connection to the original, though I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing.

Still impossible to recommend as a good film, then, but it's definitely a cut above the original (if not quite as funny).