Customer Reviews

Spiders 2

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

 

 

Although the first Spiders movie was quite good, this one lacks most of what made the first enjoyable.

There is no solid plotline, no interesting lead characters, no conspiracies, aliens, Men in Black, etc. All it really has going for it is seeing Bull, from TV's Night Court, as the villain.

A couple are rescued at sea by a large freighter. On board is a doctor who is conducting experiments on giant spiders. The couple figures out what is going on, realize they are intended as victims and accidently release all of the spiders.

In the original movie, the spiders were fearsome and nasty. Here they are almost backdrops. With the surface of the ship literally crawling with the beasts, they mostly just stand around and do nothing, not even chase their prey.

Stick with the first movie and avoid this thematic sequel.

First, it has to be said that this movie is lacking in a few crucial elements. It doesn't have that essential heavy-handed plot that most movies need, nor does it have a cast of stunning stars (although having Richard Moll in it was really fun) to make up for the lack of a plot, and it also lacks a budget to throw to any sorts of effects wizardry in to cover up the casting/plot problem. So, if you have to have these things to enjoy yourself, I'd suggest you turn away from this review now, shaking your head in disgust at the four stars I'm going to give it, asking yourself what on Earth would possess someone to give such a movie such high marks. For anyone who's left (i hope there's one or two) here's my answer.

Being a fan of movies that are a bit - lacking - in monetary constraints, I saw this as a real hit-or-miss picture that was spawned from another movie that wasn't received with opened arms. It also has to do with something I'm terribly fond of, that of giant insects and the efforts they go to while trying to establish some semblance of control on an otherwise mundane planet. In this movie the director take the idea that the first movie was hinged upon, that of experimentation leading to super-spiders, and leads it down darker alleyways as it mingles human hosts, flesh-feasts in oversized gladbags, lots of fangs, and boatnapping into the fray. Without trying to give too much of the move away and warning those who are interested in seeing this movie to basically rent it as a trial and skip this for fear of spoilers, the movie begins with people having fun, playing cards and drinking, on the high seas. Their fun is quickly put to an end as they find their ship boarded, their heads and fists meeting in the most loving of manners before they are unceremoniously bagged in what appear to be some really spacious gunnysacks, their boat torched and annoying captain/bartender murdered in the process. Enter our two main, horribly naive, characters - one a bumbling male and the other a slightly more intuitive female - that stumble across the charred wreckage while kicking it in their overglorified sailboat, take some pictures of it in the process before finding themselves in the midst of a horrendous storm. Fearing that navigating might actually get them out of this mess, they start sending out SOS calls out frantically and then, through a manner of mishaps that prove that any idiot can get a boat and sail it, they manage to sink their vessel. As luck would have it, a sizable freight vessel is in the area and notices their rescue flares, picking them up from certain death and letting the esteemed Doctor Grbac (Richard Moll) check them out. Well, curiosity gets to our male lead and he has to prod around while on board, knowing that something is amiss because the boat, strangely enough, seems to be going around in circles (and ignoring his wife's calls of "who cares, they can be smuggling drugs for all I care" in the process). Well, after finding a room full of bodies in cold storage and evidence of some eight-legged horrors being bred in the sublevels of the boat, its up to the real brains - the heroine -to find out what's up and how to calm the nerve that her obviously ignorant husband has rubbed wrong.

Despite its flaws, there are some good effects in the movie, especially with the splattering births of the cute baby spiders. These, of course, look like sock-puppets when they crawl away, but laundry can be fearsome depending on how long its been away from the wash. Besides, there are also some really wonderful prosthetic effects showcased here as well, the kind my friends and I - with a vast amount of effort - made out of silly straws and then threw around in drunken fits, to go with the computer generated one that might keep someone with arachnophobia from laughing. So, why did I give it four stars? Because all of those elements combined into something not intentionally funny but really good, keeping me rolling for hours on end.

There is absolutely no connection between the original SPIDERS and SPIDERS 2, except for the inevitable big crawling and bouncing arachnids. Director Sam Firstenberg tries with middling success to meld the traditional Big Bug movies of the 50s with the claustrophobic feel of Sigourney Weaver battling the slimy Aliens of that series. The result is a mess that does not allow for either plot believability or character/audience involvement.

Stephanie Niznik is Alexandra, who, with her remarkably wimpy husband, is picked up out of the ocean by a sea captain (Daniel Quinn) and a mad scientist type (Richard Moll), both of whom are conducting experiments to combine spider with human DNA. Naturally, no explanation is given as to why this should inevitably lead to spiders growing as big as Buicks. SPIDERS 2 starts out more as a dramatic mystery that only hints at the existence of huge spiders. Alexandra's husband is less interesting than the Daniel Quinn character who takes a liking to her. Richard Moll gets to prance about waving his arms as he shouts out, "My experiments will revolutionize genetic science!" The second half bogs down into a scene by scene ripoff of ALIENS 2 and 3. Ms. Niznik battles both evil henchmen and mutated spiders, even as she wears the same T-shirt worn by Sigourney Weaver. The assorted spiders seem more disgusting than threatening. SPIDERS 2 would have been greatly improved had director Firstenberg tried for originality rather than variations on the tough broad in a T-shirt theme.

Do you know that generic door sound? That creaky, quick sound like a vault door opening up? This movie uses it. Ever time a door opens. For every door. Normal door, elevator door, oven door. Through out the whole movie.

They would have had more dignity using the AIM sound file.

Oh yeah, there's also bad writing, bad acting, and a generic evil scientist plot. Not worth your time. Not that a movie called "Spiders 2" would enthrall any one.

You can see the parallels between this movie & the Alien movies. People getting cocooned or webbed, sprouting of the spider monsters from a pregnated human in freezer compartments, a strong cental character of a woman who acts like she was trained by the Marines in mortal combat, and a slew of baddies behind & supportive of the creature's welfare and upbringing. So, aside from that you can almost know what to expect, but have a little fun getting there, although the spiders take a backseat to the melodramatic plot more than halfway into the film with just minor previews. My favorite scene is when Alex, the heroine, discovers the incubating pods in the lab & reluctantly witnesses the horrible process of birth of a spider from a convulsing spewing human female who is unconscious. Total Halloween prop at it's best, and if I was rich enough, I would have one made for my garage lab show exclusive. The rest is all special effects fodder, some work, some don't. I did like the incredible bond of the couple which showed it's true colors even at beginning of overboard dilemma. Spiders are always creepy.

The DVD was delivered on the earlier part of the delivery date and was in perfect working order. i would use this seller again.

Ok the first Spiders movie was fun and this one is great too. I actually really like the spider effects, it looks much less plastic than the one in the first. The story in this movie is quite intriguing. I hardly got bored, the actors played their role well. This movie would of gotten a higher mark if only the spiders were more in the movie, they are only in there for 25 mins and the movie goes for 90 mins. If the spiders were more fierce and had more screen time and more victims and isn't based on a ship, then this would of surpassed the original. Give it a chance, it's not that bad even though it is not a direct sequel.

There's nothing in this film to make it memorable. At the same time, however, it's not bad enough to be memorable either.

One different thing though is that it takes place on a boat on which scientists are conducting some manner of experiments, resulting in title creatures. The heroes are a couple who end up on this boat because... I don't remember...

This does present one problem though. Aside from the leads, everyone else is a "bad guy", so... it doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out how things work out in the end.,

The first Spiders was great it really kept me on the edge of my seat and I have to say that the monster was well created. But this movie was horrible you never hear any thing about the spiders until the middle of the film and when you do actually see the spiders it is on a huge boat. OK huge spiders on a huge boat, that's about as bad as you can get it's so fake. They should have gone back to the jungle like they did in the first spiders

I haven't seen Spiders 1, so I can't compare it to its sequel, but for its sake I hope that the old saw about a sequel being worse than the original is true. Spiders 2 was awful. Terrible. Stupid. Poorly acted. Badly written. Unimaginative. Even badly lit.

Now, granted, a B (or C or D) movie like this isn't going to have a plot out of Shakespeare, but why not have a story that makes a modicum of sense? There are so many flaws I can't possibly enumerate them all, but here are a few: Spiders 2 takes place on a cargo ship containing a secret lab in which spider and human DNA has been combined--what better place than a ship rolling on the high seas to have a lab full of glassware for experimentation? Human DNA does nothing but make the spiders supersized, like a McDonald's Value Meal--there are no hideous human/spider creatures (think The Fly or Alien Resurrection), just big bugs. At the end of the movie a truly gigantic spider as wide as the entire ship and ten times larger than the human sized spiders we'd seen before emerges--where this beast could have been throughout the rest of the film we have no idea, and it does nothing more than go down with the ship. In the final scene, guys in the rescue helicopter drop a hand grenade down to the heroine, who's holding on to her husband with one hand, being pulled down by a giant spider on one leg, with the wash of the helicopter rotor affecting her from above and the motion of the sea on the crate the spider is in from below--and she catches it one handed. Sign the girl up as an outfielder in the big leagues! Even the shoes the heroine wears are stupid--she was rescued from a sailboat where she'd undoubtedly be wearing deck shoes, and we're told that she's the only woman on board so the clothes they give her will probably be too big for her (fortunately, they aren't, and the tank top she wears is quite fetching)--where did the pumps with two inch heels come from? Is the ship not only infested with giant spiders, but also drag queens? Hmm, come to think of it, that would have made a better movie. There are a few decent special effects, but some really awful ones. Frankly, much of the film looks like what my son did when he was about five years old, playing with his rubber toys.

The only two reasons to see this are if you think it's campy enough to be funny (maybe, especially if you're influenced by hallucinogenic substances, but remember, the drag queens were my idea) or if you've got the hots for Stephanie Niznik. She's a fox, but can't save the film for me. Better spend your money on Deep Rising, a terrific, scary, funny film with another gorgeous heroine.