Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

When dealing with spiders, the sense of arachnophobia is brought on. But sometimes, especially in the movies, this can be played for laughs. Which leads us the 2002 creature feature “Eight Legged Freaks”, a movie which focuses on giant, mutated spiders. What else? This movie was an unfortunate bomb at the box office, and had its title changed thanks to clever marketing. But personally, this is a rather fun and enjoyable flick. While “Eight Legged Freaks” may not be for everyone, I still think that it should be viewed as an enjoyable and quite entertaining flick.

The story follows a small Arizona town where things are not so good financially. That is until a truck carrying toxic waste dumps a barrel into a lake, and effects the grasshoppers. The grasshoppers are then fed to spiders at a special farm nearby, and soon grow to gigantic proportions. Now, the town must hurry if they want to survive this invasion of mammoth arachnids.

“Eight Legged Freaks” is a dumb flick. But it's an enjoyably dumb flick.

Everything has a campy value and vibe to it, providing a lot of ridiculous moments. From jumping spiders attacking bikers, to a whole infestation of spiders attacking the citizens at a mall. There are even spiders that attack ostriches! It's a simple monster movie, and for what it's worth, it's fun. And if you don't like this film on that term, then this movie isn't for you.

The dialogue also reflects this statement, as there are a lot of lines that just want to punch you in the stomach for how bad they are. But that's what makes this movie quite worth the entertainment value. In fact, the whole movie is rather an easy watch. At only 100 minutes, thee isn't a scene that's too slow or too fast.

In fact, the only true negative thing to say about this film is that this was a flop upon release back in the day. Originally, the film was to be under the title “Arach Attack”, when almost sounded eerily similar to the start of War on Terror invasion beginning in 2003. Also, the film was produced by the same team that made “Independence Day” and the 1998 version of “Godzilla”; so, in turn, that deterred a lot of people away from this production. But really, is this film really that bad? Well...

Despite this movie being a lot of fun in its own unique way, there are some problems concerning it. The acting is lame, and the characters themselves are quite dumb. The same thing goes for the plot, which is filled with holes and makes a lick of sense whenever logic is brought forth. The effects used here can range from decent with practical effects, to laughable with bad CGI involved. Plus, the sound effects make the entire thing look as if this were on big cartoon. But like I said, that just makes the movie a lot more fun to watch.

In conclusion, while “Eight Legged Freaks” may not be the greatest movie out there when it concerns spiders, but it is certainly the most entertaining.