Ice Spiders (2007)
- Andrew Smith
- 4 hours ago
- 6 min read
"Hell has just frozen over"
Plot
An Olympic ski team head to a remote ski-lodge in order to train in peace and quiet. However what they didn't expect to encounter was a bunch of giant mutated spiders which have escaped from a nearby laboratory and are killing everyone on the slopes.
Review
This is yet another Sci-Fi Channel original feature so before watching it, I could quite easily have written this review and been about 90% accurate in what I say. Originality isn't their specialty and it shows once again, though I am shocked that this one is slightly better written and slightly more fun than normal. With a bigger budget, Ice Spiders could have made a daft counterpart to the likes of Eight-Legged Freaks or Snakes on a Plane as, surprisingly, it’s one of Sci-Fi's best efforts, a fun and breezy affair which does what it sets out to do. Come on though, if you're going to watch a film called Ice Spiders then you know what you're in for. There's going to be ice. And there's going to spiders. The title intrigued me a little and the film poster looks pretty kick ass but don't let it fool you - no spider in this film grows to that size.... unfortunately. But this is part of the genre comfort. The audience knows the tropes. They know the cover art is lying to them. They know it's going be bad. They know the budget is going to be restrictive, and that creates a low stake, incredibly safe viewing environment. They aren't watching to be shocked by an unpredictable twist. They’re watching to see the specific, clumsy ways the makers of the film execute a formula that everyone already knows by heart. They just want you to turn your brain off. And that you'll need to here.
I’m not beating around the bush here with this review so let’s get to the main attraction of the title. The spiders are pretty feeble. Actually, they're not just pretty feeble, they're ultra-feeble. There are red and green spiders. Not just multi-coloured or shaded, these bad guys are completely one colour as if the effects team just clicked on ‘fill colour’ when they were rendering them on the computer. I guess it's supposed to allow you to tell them apart (so you know which one can jump, which one is the black widow etc.) but it just looks like something from an old PS2 game where enemies are colour coded so you know which ones do what and not a good game at that. They are flat, unshaded, featureless blobs of colour pasted over the footage, hardly threatening creatures. The other major problem is that you see them right from the very beginning. Usually in these flicks, the monsters are slowly revealed throughout the film, so you see an eye or a leg at first, maybe some POV shots as they attack people, and then get the gradual reveal. But the tension just evaporates and the air is sucked of the film so early when you see them scurrying across the screen within the first five minutes. The monster your mind creates in the dark will always be scarier than a pixelated red blob on a television screen. By showing their hand immediately, the filmmakers just rob the viewer of any suspense. Even if the eventual creature is disappointing (like pretty much 90% of these type of films), the audience has at least had chance to use their imaginations and conjure up something more horrific. I get that this is a desperate strategy for audience retention. In the cable television format, people are constantly channel surfing. If you take too long to slowly build suspense with shadows and rustling bushes, a casual viewer flipping channels might get bored and switch to a sitcom. But if they’re channel surfing and see a spider attacking someone, then they’re more likely to stay tuned in.
Ice Spiders is just so cheesy to keep the attention span longer than a couple of scenes though. I'm debating whether it was intentionally made as bad as this, but I don't think it was - I'd be giving the writers way too much credit if I thought it was meant to be a parody. The script is peppered with lousy one-liners. The acting in the film is dire too. Patrick Muldoon has his ‘ski bum’ rap down to a tee but delivers every line the same way so whether he's angry, hitting on some chicks at the lodge or just being a total douche, his voice doesn't change one bit. Taking it separately, it's a shocking performance but you know what - it makes the film goofier and cheesier and somehow slightly better as his casual indifference to everything that is occurring around him. Also worth noting for the laughable performance is Stephen J. Cannell as Frank, the older owner of the resort. As soon as this guy opens his mouth, he's acting like he's in a commercial for some hair replacement products (and he looks like he's used them too). I didn’t realise it at the time but made the connection since that, as executive producer, Cannell was one of the creative forces behind The A-Team. He was definitely better off behind the camera than in front of it.
Ice Spiders does make good use of its snowy setting though, which makes it stand out a little more than its brethren. There aren’t just generic set pieces but ones which are actively constructed around the notion of being at a ski resort. The writers definitely had the novel idea of “killer spiders but on ice” and then brainstormed as many different ideas as possible they could work with, before whittling them down to budgetary reasons and ones which were practical for the film. Clearly, no one thought about creating scary set pieces or something that could generate a bit of tension or suspense as characters would have to figure out a way to escape because Ice Spiders isn't atmospheric in the slightest. No sense of fear, of panic or danger. It just goes through lots of motions. There's lots of skiing and snowboarding too. And I mean lots of it. Even the finale involves the main character shredding down the side of the mountain to lead the spiders into a trap that the military has set up. Stock footage is used throughout – do you really think they could afford to shoot all of that footage of the real cast ‘shredding’ down the slopes?
Let's see, what else do we have? Oh yes, the obligatory science and military teams. The scientists are fodder for the spiders before the film begins and we see a few dismembered corpses lying around in the lab. The generic military team filled with lifeless grunts doesn't actually get sacrificed to the spiders either: it's just all of the poor schmucks at the ski resort. With this being made-for-TV, there’s not much chance of Ice Spiders being overly gory and so the kill scenes aren’t as bloody as they might be. I don't know about you, but I didn't think spiders were picky and took off random limbs from their prey instead of cocooning their victims in web and sucking their victims' bodies completely dry of bodily fluids. In the film’s best moment, a character is forced to jump from half-way up a ski lift and breaks his legs upon contact with the snow beneath. A spider likes to have a warm meal and begins to feast on him as he tries to crawl away, leading to a shot a few moments later of the spider slurping up a big chunk of intestines. I wish there had been more of this type of sequence in the film, rather than it being too safe for TV.
Final Verdict
Though not as daftly entertaining as something bigger budgeted like Eight-Legged Freaks. Ice Spiders borders on being the type of monster flick that I should love but its way too cheesy and poorly made to really elevate it any higher. However, it's great to watch if you are missing the Winter Olympics - the constant skiing and snowboarding will keep you entertained for hours! It's a pity that these spiders won't.
 |
Ice Spiders Director(s): Tibor Takács Writer(s): Eric Miller Actor(s): Patrick Muldoon, Charles Halford, Thomas Calabro, Stephen J. Cannell, Vanessa Williams, David Millbern, Connie Young, Jill Adler Duration: 86 mins |  |
|---|
