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Webs
(2003)
Plot
A team of electricians is sent into an
abandoned house to prepare it for demolition. However they stumble upon a
previously-unknown room, powered by a tiny nuclear reactor, which contains all
manner of weird equipment. When one of the group messes with the power, a beam
of light appears and sucks the men into it. They emerge into a parallel universe
where humans are now on the menu - from a giant spider queen and her countless
armies.
Review
Once again the lure of decent-looking
cover box art has conned me into watching something that pretty much has no
right to exist. Actually, I didn't buy this one for a change: I rented it out
free of charge courtesy of my job. My guardian angel was clearly looking out for
me somewhere because I'd have probably thrown myself off a high building had I
actually stumped up the usual money I pay for these cheap jack efforts. Truth be
told, Webs isn't as bad as I'm making out. Let's take a look.
I have slight problems with films that have big ideas but little money to bring
them to life. You almost feel sorry for people involved at times. You know they
want to make a big film and they clearly have some idea of where to go but they
don't have the cash to realise it and their end products suffer as a result.
Webs is one such end product. The whole idea of spiders taking over the
planet and forcing humanity into small resistance cells was way too huge for the
modest sum of money that someone bank rolled here. Instead of seeing the "whole
picture" of the effects of this conquest on the planet, the film just uses the
same bland warehouse sets over and over again and confines the characters inside
for most of the running time. If you're going to suggest the end of humanity, I
actually want to see it! You do need your brain dropping off at the first floor
before you take the elevator of plot holes and bad writing. Tiny nuclear
reactors? Come on! A cardinal sin the film makes is that it starts off, well
pretty stupidly it has to be said, with the electricians discovering the portal
and then finding themselves in the alternate reality. So many questions will run
through your head and the film doesn't really bother explaining anything for a
long time. People with giant claw hands running of buildings? I guess the
writers know you're watching a film called Webs and think that 2+2=4 so
you must think these people are spiders. Then the film turns into an endless
array of spider-people chasing people, fights and then more spider-people
chasing people around the warehouses. It gets boring pretty quickly.
Richard Grieco "stars" but he's either slumming badly or it's a body double for
most of the film. He makes a bland hero but I guess you can't blame anyone for
not wanting to bust a gut in a film like this. Kate Greenhouse fares a lot
better as the intelligent love interest but once again her character is written
so thinly that you can pretty much predict what she's going to say and do
throughout the film. There's little soppy romance between the two even though
they do fall for each other. We're spared most of the usual crap. The worst part
about the script is that the characters do exactly what you think they're going
to do at all times....but even more so than usual. For example, the whole idea
of Richard Grieco's character being the chosen one is pretty blah at best. But
he accepts his fate so readily and without question. I guess being an
electrician sucks so bad that you'll accept any notion of being a hero without
the smallest hint of questioning. Colin Fox, as the token scientist, also has a
really hard time with the script. He's the one who has to try and make all of
the talk about aliens and parallel universes sound plausible and he fails
miserably.
I didn't expect to see a lot of special effects on show and I was right. The
spider queen is given brief screen time early on in the film and is a mix of a
decent-looking model and really bad CGI. You'll guess right if you don't expect
to see it again until the finale. In the meantime, there's plenty of
spider-people running around doing her dirty work. By spider-people I mean
actors with big rubber claws and fake teeth. And there's a lot of them.
Sometimes they come off zombie-like in their mass-attack strategies and uncanny
knacks of jumping out from tiny places for shock value. But at the end of the
day, as much as I'm hammering the film, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Now
there's a first! The film is never engaging in the slightest and it gets pretty
boring at times, but I think there's some morbid curiosity in there as to how
everything will turn out. Wait a minute - I know how everything is going to turn
out from the start. But the slightest, tiniest chance that I could be wrong kept
me going. Unfortunately I wasn't wrong and the film pans out like the "My First
Sci-Fi Film" book of filmmaking. And the ending? O...K....
Verdict
Webs is a bad film. But it's not totally terrible,
given the idea of alien spiders conquering a parallel universe that someone
pitched (jokingly I would guess) to the producers and the amount of money they
got to make it in return. I can't be going soft on crap films, can I? |
