Customer Reviews

Ice Spiders

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This Sci-Fi Channel flick has all the necessary ingredients for a cheesy B movie and utilizes them to the fullest:
*adequate if non-imaginative fx
*bad acting
*somewhat ridiculous script
*dumb people doing dumb things, and last but not least:
*writer/producer/actor Stephen J. Cannell.
ICE SPIDERS doesn't set any new standars for giant bug flix, but it's tale of genetically altered arachnids should please giant bug auteurs.

The first thing that comes to mind with this movie is that gigantic spiders like the ones on the cover do not appear. The spiders are, obviously, gigantic by spider standards but they are smaller than humans.

A few things happen when people begin to encounter the spiders and something is usually happening in terms of plot. It's not the repetitive "monster(s) appear, someone dies/disappears, monster(s) vanish, survivors have no idea what happened, repeat" formula seen in a lot of other movies.

I found it reasonably entertaining despite the inaccuracy of the front cover.

This movie rides above bad movies, but barely. We have great spider effects, and lots of blood, we have the outdoors, some good skiing scenes.
The script was decent. I rated this one above Roger Cormans movies. The
trouble is the casting...Must be a crappy casting company to come up with
some crappy actors that eventually brings the movie down. Especially near the end of the movie. Dont get me wrong..there was some good acting though. Good acting would make problems more transparent.
So, yes its really worth a viewing, especially for the spiders and skiing.

"Ice Spiders" is about giant government-spawned spiders versus the most annoying ski team in history. Essentially there's an evil government program to genetically engineer giant spiders for military purposes. You see, the government got a prehistoric arachnid from Afghanistan and spliced it with modern spiders to obtain their silk, which is bulletproof.

Vanessa Williams is Dr. April Sommers, a big-league expert on arachnid genetics, and is ignorant of the sinister overtones of the work at the lab. The male protagonist is Patrick Muldoon as Dan "Dash" Dashiell, a formerly great skier and now a has-been teaching a bunch of sniveling, elitist high school age skiers in preparation for the Olympics.

To say that Williams can't pull off the role of a brilliant scientist is a huge understatement, but she and Muldoon are actually the most likeable cast members. I was so ready for the spiders to eat all the teenagers, that every minute they were onscreen and uneaten was more and more agonizing (and made even more so by extremely "cool" dialogue like "that was some nice carvin' by you, man", and frequent use of words like "gnarly").

The box art is not representative of the film. The box shows gigantic spiders the size of an airplane hangar, but in the film the spiders are about the size of a golden retriever. The spiders are very poorly executed CGI and are about as realistic and scary of a science fiction creature as "Alf". The writing and acting are very amateurish, and the film is full of ridiculous situations that take away from the film. My favorite scene involves a school bus full of teenagers: it's completely ludicrous, yet entertaining. (The same theme was done much more skillfully with angry ravens in "Kaw".) Sadly some of the teens do survive the arachnid holocaust: hopefully, though, they will never be in another film.

I gave the film two stars, which is generous, because in spite of the cast, the film was sometimes quite entertaining, although in a way I suspect that the producers didn't intend. If you like "Mystery Science Theater 3000", you'll immediately see what I mean.

Man this is a great sci fi movie. In order to enjoy this movie you must love sci fi films, rediculous graphics, plot, and actors. If all this appeals to you you will love this movie.

I actually wasted money renting this instead of watching it on the SciFi channel on Saturday night which, around my house, has become Bad SciFi Movie Night. The spiders are obviously CGI and occasionally appear to be from a different movie. Most of the actors are unknowns and this movie won't be aiding them in their efforts to get noticed by Spielberg. The recycled plot is that scientists have been studying spider silk (stronger than steel and flexible) and, for some reason, one scientist genetically engineered the spiders, which grew larger and larger and then escaped.

I like scifi when it's big and dumb (hey, I watched MST3K for nearly 10 years) but, honesly, I've seen better giant spider movies.

Giant spider movie? what is more creepy? This version is a made for SCI-FI Channel production so i guess you know what your gonna get. this movie would have been better if the siders were as big as the box art but alas they were only a fraction of that size. This is your typical goverment project developes big spiders for secret project gone wrong tale. it has it's momments and ultimately it's not horrible just not very original or for that matter scary, famous Producer Steven J Cannell ( The Rockford Files ...NBC ect..) even has a bit role in this! Attactive young cast but spiders are just goofy CGI, I love bug monster movies but this is just average PG stuff.

What can be said about movies that deal with nature biting back? Writers should seriously think about ideas before spending five minutes to write a movie and hoping that viewers won't want to demand their money back. I'm a fan of science fiction. Arachnophobia...original, Tarantula...interesting, Eight Legged Freaks...hilarious. But mixing genetic research and spiders, just doesn't mix, unless you want to make another Spider-Man. This movie is in a long line of straight to DVD releases about the ramifications of playing God with nature, and fails miserably. The special effects of the movies about spiders back in the 50s and 60s were 10 times better as well as the acting. I laughed more when I should have jumped with fright. But then again, to some of my fellow sci-fi freaks, you may like it...if there is nothing funnier on.

There are a lot of good B movies out there, this doesn't even make it into the alphabet for reasons noted by the other Amazon reviewers here. I've seen parts of this on SyFy before, it's on right now and is worse than I remember.

This is your basic SyFy movie - take a barely scientific concept and just run with it regardless of plot holes and bad acting. This movie is funny - if you do not take it seriously! I mean, just look at the title! Ice Spiders!!! The spiders are huge and they terrorize kids at a mountain resort. As per the usual SyFy flick, the people make lots of bad decisions that cause many of them to be mauled and killed by the dreaded ICE SPIDERS! It's pretty hilarious for a B-movie flick.