I relatively enjoyed Spiders. It wasn't a good movie as such, but it did find that perfect B-Movie tone that a lot of this type of film take a swing and a miss for. I'm genuinely not sure how they would manage the success of a Straight-To-DVD movie that would drop just as the rental market was beginning to die, but evidently it, or Nu Image's slew of 2000 creature features on the whole, dud enough business for them to warrant sequels.
This one follows Alex (Stephanie Niznik) and Jason (Greg Cromer) a young couple out sailing who encounter the burned out husk of a boat before being shipwrecked themselves due to a storm. They find salvation in the form of 'Mystery of the Seas' a giant cargo ship that stumbles upon them.
Led by the shifty Captain Bigelow (Daniel Quinn) the ship's crew includes the mysterious Dr Grbec (Richard Moll) and a skeleton crew of seamen. While treating a wound Jason has picked up, the good doctor insists on providing him with an antibiotic to avoid infection. While the crew are initially very helpful, they seem reluctant to let them attempt contact with the outside World. What are they shipping and what exactly is Dr Grbec upto?
Let's just clarify this right off the bat - this isn't any good. I mean the first one wasn't good, but it was fun and had the perfect tone to pull off its nonsense. This plays itself deadly straight and is miserable for it. It dwells far too much on the drama with very little actual spiders for a movie with Spiders in the title. There's a whole lot of 'suspense' surrounding the Logan, the shipwreck from the opening that anyone with half a brain can work out is the work of this crew within half a second. It does raise the bigger issue of how laughably bad the actual plan is. Are they genuinely just relying on randomly coming across ships to attack and kidnap the crew on? Come to think of it, who even are the company behind this nonsense? Where did they get the first giant spider? Wasn't there a way of somehow at least attempting to tie this to the original?
While characters in these movies aren't renowned for great intelligence, our heroine is hard to get behind due to her complete lack of any common sense. No matter how much Jason tries to convince her something is afoot, she's happy to go along with everything the Captain, whom she just met, has told her while dismissing her husband as going crazy. And this is while he's actually presenting her with entirely grounded questions like why are they going in circles? Carrying no cargo? Lying about the radio? He doesn't even touch on his recurring nightmare about a giant spider, though does question the mysterious, fresh, wound on his chest that she dismisses.
There isn't much acting to speak of. The leading pair aren't the worst I've ever seen but they aren't good enough to try carry this gutter level script to watchable status. Moll, who really should know better, is normally a great fun character actor but even he seems despondent to be part of this. Probably the pick of the bunch is Quinn, who isn't exactly a superstar but is capable of emoting and I think might be a lot better when armed with a solid script .
The effects...well the practical effects are cheesy but fun, the green screen and CGI abhorrent. This is very much at the cusp of cheap movies throwing themselves too headlong into bad CGI. While some of the bad CGI, of the giant spiders crawling over the boat, is quite hilarious, it's largely just eye rolling stuff.
Director Sam Firstenberg has actually made entertaining movies in the past, so I was really surprised to learn this tripe was shot by his hand. It really isn't any good, and as much as I knew going in that 'Spiders 2' wasn't going to be good, it could at least have had the grace to be good fun, which it doesn't. It's not the absolute worst Nu Image creature feature, it's probably better than either of the first 2 Shark Attacks, but it's a disappointing follow up to a fun original.
This one follows Alex (Stephanie Niznik) and Jason (Greg Cromer) a young couple out sailing who encounter the burned out husk of a boat before being shipwrecked themselves due to a storm. They find salvation in the form of 'Mystery of the Seas' a giant cargo ship that stumbles upon them.
Led by the shifty Captain Bigelow (Daniel Quinn) the ship's crew includes the mysterious Dr Grbec (Richard Moll) and a skeleton crew of seamen. While treating a wound Jason has picked up, the good doctor insists on providing him with an antibiotic to avoid infection. While the crew are initially very helpful, they seem reluctant to let them attempt contact with the outside World. What are they shipping and what exactly is Dr Grbec upto?
Let's just clarify this right off the bat - this isn't any good. I mean the first one wasn't good, but it was fun and had the perfect tone to pull off its nonsense. This plays itself deadly straight and is miserable for it. It dwells far too much on the drama with very little actual spiders for a movie with Spiders in the title. There's a whole lot of 'suspense' surrounding the Logan, the shipwreck from the opening that anyone with half a brain can work out is the work of this crew within half a second. It does raise the bigger issue of how laughably bad the actual plan is. Are they genuinely just relying on randomly coming across ships to attack and kidnap the crew on? Come to think of it, who even are the company behind this nonsense? Where did they get the first giant spider? Wasn't there a way of somehow at least attempting to tie this to the original?
While characters in these movies aren't renowned for great intelligence, our heroine is hard to get behind due to her complete lack of any common sense. No matter how much Jason tries to convince her something is afoot, she's happy to go along with everything the Captain, whom she just met, has told her while dismissing her husband as going crazy. And this is while he's actually presenting her with entirely grounded questions like why are they going in circles? Carrying no cargo? Lying about the radio? He doesn't even touch on his recurring nightmare about a giant spider, though does question the mysterious, fresh, wound on his chest that she dismisses.
There isn't much acting to speak of. The leading pair aren't the worst I've ever seen but they aren't good enough to try carry this gutter level script to watchable status. Moll, who really should know better, is normally a great fun character actor but even he seems despondent to be part of this. Probably the pick of the bunch is Quinn, who isn't exactly a superstar but is capable of emoting and I think might be a lot better when armed with a solid script .
The effects...well the practical effects are cheesy but fun, the green screen and CGI abhorrent. This is very much at the cusp of cheap movies throwing themselves too headlong into bad CGI. While some of the bad CGI, of the giant spiders crawling over the boat, is quite hilarious, it's largely just eye rolling stuff.
Director Sam Firstenberg has actually made entertaining movies in the past, so I was really surprised to learn this tripe was shot by his hand. It really isn't any good, and as much as I knew going in that 'Spiders 2' wasn't going to be good, it could at least have had the grace to be good fun, which it doesn't. It's not the absolute worst Nu Image creature feature, it's probably better than either of the first 2 Shark Attacks, but it's a disappointing follow up to a fun original.