REWIND: Ice Spiders Review

Oh yeah, the movie club’s first post is here and only one lucky participant came through with a review. My fault, since I didn’t really post much about it after the initial posting. It’s ok though, here is the review for Ice Spiders that I promised.

The movie starts off slow but picks up immediately with killer Spiders! This movie has cg spiders and they aren’t very good. These spiders are HUGE but they aren’t that scary. Furthermore the movie makes it seem that the spiders have been there a while and the sizes vary depending on how far away from the camera they are. I know, that seems like a standard thing in regards to optics, however, if you notice the scale of the spiders compared to the trees that are in the background, they are completely disproportionate! But I let it go, since this was made for the Sci-Fi channel and we’re not dealing with a million dollar budget.

The spider effects are horrible, and the initial death sequences are lame. I kept thinking that if I were there I’d sock out a spider since their mouths aren’t located in a position to eat me straight up. I guess I was over thinking this film from the get go, and why not? It’s not like I’m getting paid for this.

The movie’s plot is basic; a group of young skiers are attacked when a group of genetically modified spiders escape from a local laboratory. I don’t know why they don’t just run away, but instead of running the group must defend themselves before the spiders eat everyone!

Here’s a trailer for Ice Spiders:



This movie has ok acting and I don’t really expect a lot out of the Sci-Fi channel. However, this type of film reminds me of something that I’d like to share with you, my loyal 3 readers:

I worked as a Video Store Clerk for many years and the weekend day guy was named Justin Paul Ritter. Justin made a film called “Katie Bird” which was a low budget and well received horror slasher flick. It was awesome! He once told me that these sci-fi channel movies have budgets of $125,000 to $500,000 and they usually spend most of their money on the lead actor or actors. So keep that in mind when you watch these made for tv horror films.



Back to the review, Vanessa A. Williams in this movie alongside Patrick Muldoon and those two would most likely take most of the budget given the name recognition. These two provide the bulk of the acting work, and they actually put on a good, entertaining distraction to the horrible effects and stupid decisions that the characters make.

The gore is fake. Yep, there are parts in this film that use fake cg gore effects instead of real blood or make up effects. So when things are really going bad, you can totally tell that the blood on the floors and on people are not real! I hate when they skimp on this part, and it really shows lack of creativity among the people producing the film. If the blood and gore effects aren’t enough, we get first person view points from the spiders but when you’re supposedly seeing things from their point of view it isn’t always blurred. Sometimes the first person camera is blurred and at other times it’s clear.

Now, all real Spider facts aside, and logic getting thrown right outside of the window, this movie isn’t all that bad. I have seen far worse and have reviewed terrible movies on this site. This film, if I can call it that, would have been a steady renter if it didn’t premiere on cable. Thanks to the ubiquitous nature of basic cable in todays society, films like this are usually horrible and never do quite well on dvd. However, for those small niche markets that have a large population that doesn’t subscribe to cable, this movie is actually not bad and probably gets rented a lot of the time.

If this film does nothing else it makes me question how secure our government labs are. I mean, how can these spiders really escape? They are not that threatening, they do not have super strength, they are just big and well…big. I really have a hard time with the logic of this film, especially since the Spiders want to attack humans at will with no real strategy. It’s like all animals, as soon as they are unleashed into the wild or are smart enough to escape laboratories, are somehow relegated to killing off mankind in some sort of revenge plot that makes the movie’s title make sense. Ice Spiders is not horrible, but it’s definitely not on my top ten list of movies to watch. In fact, Ice Spiders doesn’t make my top 100 list of films to watch.

There are pluses to this film. I think the production value, outside of the cg inserts, isn’t all that bad. There are some scene’s that even look like mainstream Hollywood. Compare the scene’s in Doom or Resident Evil with some of the exploration scenes in this film and you can see seamless transition between photography and direction. I don’t recommend Ice Spiders to anyone that doesn’t already enjoy Sci-Fi channels line up. In fact if you’re comfortable with straight to dvd horror or science fiction in general, you might see past the flaws of logic found in this film. It is after all a movie, and well, it’s science fiction, not well made science fiction, but good enough to scare little naïve kids. Ice Spiders serves up a chilly movie to watch, and I can’t believe I watched it.

Thanks goes out to YUMMY! for posting a review of Ice Spiders! Thank you so much for participating in the comments and reviewing this bad horror movie. We'll have to do it again sometime! Check out Yummydown.com and leave a comment on the review.


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