Director: Scott Jeffery
Year: 2021
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Forced to enhance her ratings, the host of a failing true crime show decides to bump her fortunes by investigating a local story about a doctor supposedly manipulating genes at a remote house in the area, but when they find the house overrun by massive mutated spiders they have to get away alive.
Review:
This was a fairly solid and enjoyable effort. One of the finer features of this one is the rather strong setup that lets everything come together in a rather intriguing manner. The motivation to reach out about the story by trying to modernize her show that’s besieged by the failing ratings spiel to try to throw caution to the wind and force her way into the house to tease out the truth about the rumors surrounding the area is handled well enough throughout here. This provides the impetus to believe why she would be so inclined to ignore so many obvious signs about the house’s condition or arrive at the house with such a flimsy story about the need to be there as the desire to figure out the true story behind his disappearance and eventual death as her single-minded nature to get her show where it should be is well-handled throughout here.
On top of this fine starting point, the action within the house is usually rather fun for the most part. With the first half here of the group wandering through the empty house arguing about the ethics of everything but generally ignoring the atmosphere of what’s around them including the insert shots of the spiders going through rooms or the team being blissfully unaware of the massive cobwebs left behind, there’s a far creepier and more atmospheric touch than expected in this part of the film. That goes along quite nicely with the second half where it goes into a far more obvious territory with the group struggling to escape from the house crawling with the now-ravenous spiders. This picks up the action and suspense quite a bit from the static and laid-back first half where it’s all about the group trying to keep themselves alive while delivering the baby since the pregnant daughter is going into labor but must still fend off the main spider scurrying through the house trying to get at them. It’s cheesy enough and goes along nicely with the goofy effects present to give the film a lot to like.
There are some drawbacks to be had with this one. The biggest issue, which does come off incredibly prominently here, is the otherworldly stupidity displayed by the group as things go along. The whole excuse about not wanting to throw away a potential gold-mine discovery for her show is no excuse for the rest of the group to remain in the house where they knowingly find massive killer spiders running around, and even after catching one are completely unbothered to try contacting the authorities or even leaving. That they have a pregnant woman on the verge of going into labor when they arrive is a plot point that’s going to be paid off as obviously as it should be, and that doesn’t generate any kind of impact on the utterly useless Army brat daughter who’s skill-set is completely ignored in favor of utterly stupid actions substituted for bravery. This holds it down incredibly well, much like the outrageously terrible CGI that looks patently fake but still holds the usual charm of these types of films so it’s not nearly as detrimental as it should but still has some impact.
Overview: ***.5/5
An enjoyably cheesy killer spider film, there’s more than enough to like here to be entertaining in this type of feature while being let down by some issues from what the positives could’ve done for it. Those who appreciate this style of indie feature, are huge fans of the type of cheesy creature features, or are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like here while most others out there should heed caution with this one.
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