Eight Legged Freaks DVD > Reviews > The Other Spider Movie...

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Advantages:	Some great moments .
Disadvantages:	David Arquette's the only freak in this film .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Poor David Arquette. It’s not his fault that he can’t act or make good career choices. First came the Scream franchise which unfortunately made him a star but then did a good deed and nearly killed his career with Scream 3. Since then he has been biding his time until he can resurface and pretend to be a serious actor again. Unintentionally, he has shot himself in the foot by appearing in a comedy that ridicules everyone in it. Whilst he was probably hoping to establish himself as a great comic actor, all he has revealed is that he can’t act, since it takes great skill to deliberately act badly.

The whole joke of Eight Legged Freaks is that it’s a spoof on 50’s horror movies and the campy overacting. Everyone else manages to be ludicrously serious and demonstrate skill, whereas David Arquette ruins every opportunity at humour by acting as though he’s in Schindlers List when he’s meant to be funny, and acting as though he were in Airplane when he’s trying to be serious. The comedy comes from playing it straight in a silly situation, but Arquette sucks the fun out of the film with his tiresome performance and the fact that he seems to have just three expressions all consisting of wry amusement.

That said, he’s not really well supported by the rest of the film which has the promise of a future classic but sadly fails because it’s not quite bad enough to be good. If you want an example of the humour that can be achieved simply by deadpanning every line, then watch Christina Ricci’s performance in Addams Family Values. Every single line she has, she just drops without a trace of emotion, and it’s hilarious. Eight Legged Freaks feels a bit like a joke stretched too thin, and should really be no more than an extended sketch on a comedy series. It’s never quite as funny as it deserves to be which is a shame because the set up is great, it just falls flat when it tries to be a spoof.

The plot is suitably ludicrous as you would expect but is just a little too self conscious to perfectly capture the naïve campy charm that it aims for. It concerns the residents of a small town being overrun by giant spiders after a barrel of toxic waste starts to enlarge the eight legged inhabitants of a local farm. In the traditional disaster movie way, the only person who knows what’s going on is a young boy who the townspeople ignore because “he’s just a kid”. It isn’t long before the townspeople are on the run from spiders of many different varieties and eventually unite in a mall to fight back against the invaders.

The Cast:
David Arquette- Chris Mc Cormack
Kari Wuher- Sheriff Sam Parker
Scott Terra- Mike Parker
Scarlett Johansson- Ashley Parker
Doug E Doug- Harlan
Rick Overton- Deputy Pete
Leon Rippy- Wade
Matt Czuchry- Bret
Jay Arlen Jones- Leon

Although he doesn’t have much range, David Arquette still manages to steal a few scenes, especially with his priceless melodramatic “they’re here!” scream into the telephone. The ostrich scene and the spiders chasing the bikers are also future classic scenes, but it still lacks any laugh out loud corniness or outrageous hammy acting. The rest of the cast try too hard and never tap into the “spiders are taking over my town, but I’m going to remain perfectly calm” ideology which would achieve the films aims far better than acting well and missing the point of a movie spoofing bad acting.

The special effects are another aspect which let the film down, by being too good. I wanted rubber spiders on a rope, not some perfectly CGI’d creations that belonged in a Hollywood blockbuster. The script was also the result of trying too hard and had little of the panicky over the top hysteria that would have been so funny. Critters is a good example of the comedy that arises from people reacting normally to monsters, or vice versa in Gremlins, particularly the scene where the mother goes psycho in the kitchen and butchers all the creatures with a knife.

Basically Eight Legged Freaks is a perfectly enjoyable horror/comedy with plenty of laughs but it lacks in so many areas that it is neither a spoof or a parody and this lets the film down. It’s not worth catching in the cinema, rent it on a Saturday night if you’re very bored and feel like punishing yourself. If you want a spider movie, rent Arachnophobia or Mimic if you’re a real fan of mutated bugs. But then again, if you really are a fan of those stupid movies, you deserve to be bored…rent Eight Legged Freaks, and get a life.