Those damned Russians! First, they were responsible for the ongoing Cold War that would scared me silly throughout most of my youth. In my teenage years, it was White Russians that were my downfall at any local establishment with a liquor license. And now, it is a Soviet space station that has crashed in New York City that is resulting in giant venomous spiders. Damn you Russians. Damn you, Damn you, Damn you! Of course, the third of those examples never really did happen. Or at least not on anything outside of a Fox News Report (apparently it was Obama's fault too). But it is the idea behind the new monster film, Spiders from director Tibor Takács, who back in 1987 surprised us with a little Canadian film called The Gate. Spiders stars Patrick Muldoon (Melrose Place, Starship Troopers) as Jason, the father figure and potential hero of our film that has to fight both the military presence on the streets of New York and the rampaging and irate arachnids as he attempts to free his daughter from a quarantined zone within the city. So he will run, jump, dodge and evade the obstacles in his way leading us to a conclusion that is hardly in doubt for a movie of this genre. Converted into 3D, Spiders is a step up from usual Syfy movie-of-the-week madness. But that bar has been set so low that patting anyone on the back is hardly necessary. The spiders look campy and hardly creepy. And the whole idea is really just an excuse to make a $50,000 looking Them! A few special effects could be considered 'passable', but in general, everything looks computer generated and I have seen a man in a Godzilla suit destroying Tokyo look more realistic. Muldoon seems destined to remain in CGI-monster direct-to-VOD films for the foreseeable future and has worked with the director once before fighting a different type of spider with Ice Spiders in 2007. He looks tired yet invested in Spiders and is hardly the reason why the film fails. That fault can go to the lack of any character development, lack of good special effects, lack of plot or purpose that dogs this film from start to finish.
Review of Spiders
