Eight Legged Freaks
Hitless David Arquette strikes out again in this feature about spiders taking over a small town in Arizona. The star of such classics as See Spot Run and Ready to Rumble comes back to his childhood home just in the nick of time to see spiders at the local spider farm mutated by nearby river contamination and run loose in the streets. Predictably, the rest of the movie shows a bunch of running and shooting and little story in between. It also stars Scarlett Johansson of Ghost World fame, reduced to the role of rebellious but helpless daughter of the pretty and cool Kari Wuhrer, who people will (or will not) remember from the old MTV game show Remote Control. Nerds and geeks alike will remember her from the last years of the Fox/Sci-Fi channel show Sliders. She's the sheriff who leads the town against the spiders.

The commercials had this one comparing itself to Tremors, but this my friends is no Tremors. For some odd reason, that struck the odd balance of being realistic, smart, creepy, and humorous all in the same movie. But like Reign of Fire, Eight Legged Freaks dumbs down the movie to simply kill or be killed. Heck, Tremors' two awful sequels are slightly better than this. Storylines designed to make this a little complex are handled in a line or two. "I know you love me but let's kill that spider first." or "Hey, there's the gold that will save this town." Not actual lines from the movie, but it certainly wasn't meant to be memorable either. Besides, the spiders weren't too realistic. You could really tell they're fake. I will give it credit for making fun of itself. It is such a ridiculous idea to fathom that it has to be somekind of self-parody. Plus, I don't understand how if fire didn't kill them earlier in the movie, it does later in the movie. Was it because with the gas, it made the fire ..., what, hotter??? Please! But all in all, it's awful, boring, and awfully boring. 1.5 stars