(Movies fail at the box office, and many more fail to even find release into theaters. When one of these dead on arrival titles arrives on disc they go under the knife of the forensic video-examiner, all in the hope of determining the causes of death in the marketplace. Be forewarned any who wish to see the film – this piece is entirely a SPOILER.)
Adding to the catalogue of arachnid horror titles – and to the immense amount which have become embarrassments – this attempt relies on extensive CGI to compensate for the low budget. (That computer work also fails to distract from using a foreign destination posing as an American metropolis.) A weak release into scant theaters in February led to this token disc getting tossed into an apathetic market.
Hungarian television director Tibor Takacs recruited a couple of actors with whom he had done earlier work. Christa Campbell hails from his opus
Mansquito, and veteran soap opera actor Patrick Muldoon risks typecasting since he previously appeared in Tibor’s
Ice Spiders. Time to cut into a new DOA-DVD and find out how this 8-legged freak spun a web of disaster.
00:01:29 Diluted Tableau We begin -- in space. A spider is shown crawling on the window of a darkened Russian space capsule, the camera panning to show webbing covering the controls as various objects float serenely. Things must have gone awry -- one of those drifting objects is a Cosmonaut.
00:03:01 Locale Anethesia We cut now to Earth, a bustling city scene in what is New York City.
Yes, the production insists that is New York and NOT Bulgaria. Trust them.
00:03:33 Weakened Impulse Time to introduce Jason, as he is on his way to work. Our hero is the director of New York Transit Authority. Surprisingly watching the activities of commuting logistics is far less exciting than that prospect sounds.
00:04:16 Plot Stimulant As Jason begins his day coordinating train routes (
oh, the goose-bumps THAT raises!) the space station is blown apart by a meteor and a piece of debris streaks over the city skyline.
Point of question: Does New York City still have elevated subway lines?
00:06:10 Arrested Physics The debris crashes above one train line so a rail worker investigates. He becomes bitten by a spider which crawled from the wreckage. This means the creatures somehow survived the fiery effects of reentering the atmosphere and a thousands-of-miles per hour impact.
00:08:44 Elevated Foreshadow Levels Jason arrives at the impact zone to watch a body carried out of the tunnel. His worker succumbed to the spider bite, fell on the Third Rail, and was electrocuted.
Jason is greeted by Rachel, representing the NYC Department of Health. Rachel has no business at the closed-off location, save for establishing she is Jason’s ex-wife. The chances of them having reconciliation during a monumental calamity are approximately 94.78%
00:11:16 Continuity Failure While asking who will pay for the cleanup we hear that the Russian satellite had been decommissioned in the 1980s. That means – based on the introduction -- the Soviets simply left a Cosmonaut stranded in space.
This proves they ARE the Evil Empire!
00:12:42 Depleted Character Concentration At a Chinese restaurant Rachel meets their two daughters. The youngest, Emily, is celebrating her twelfth birthday. The eldest is a nineteen year old sporting a thick Russian accent. No explanation is given how two New York City veterans have this family construct.
00:14:21 Arrested Physics At the morgue Jason looks in on his deceased coworker and learns that in a matter of hours the spider managed to implant eggs which have now grown to the size golf balls.
That seems entirely implausible,
unless these are somehow a rare strain of mutated vicious space spiders!
(HINT: These are a rare strain of mutated vicious space spiders.)
00:14:33 Cranial Atrophy A befuddled Jason is casually granted permission to take the extracted eggs with him to show to his ex-wife.
--
oh sure, just trundle off with evidence from a mysterious death, Mr. Transit Authority! 00:18:19 Blunt-Force Dialogue That night Jason goes to the train station, finding it overrun with rats which are fleeing the attacking spiders:
KAZ (JASON’SCO-WORKER: This is what happens when the Mayor’s cousin runs pest control.
JASON: Your wife still got that cat?!
00:21:11 Chronicle Seizure While investigating the tunnels with exterminators Jason discovers a number of vagrants died of spider bite/egg deposits. Then Jason’s co-worker Kaz is attacked by roughly seventeen dozen arachnids. That means in approximately twelve hours time they have propagated in numbers reaching the hundreds.
I’d suggest this is biologically ludicrous, but let’s not forget –
these are a rare strain of mutated vicious space spiders!
00:22:21 Invasive Pathos The next morning Jason arrives on scene to discover the military has transformed the impact area into a quarantine zone. The official word is they want to contain a viral outbreak. Jason, our heroic Transit Authority officer, becomes the only man to know this is not a contagion but is all about the spiders.
00:25:08 Cliché Malignancy How shocking for a film to reveal the U.S. Military involved in a duplicitous, nefarious plot during a domestic crisis. Here General Jenkins is working in a makeshift laboratory set up in the tunnels, with a former Soviet scientist from the failed space mission, heading on-site research.
Hopefully there is a valid military reason behind this cover-up!
00:27:48 Adverse Activity For no viable reason the Army has both of Jason’s daughter’s held in the ONLY quarantined apartment in the city. Emily nearly escapes because, as soldiers diligently seal the windows and hang caution tape, they managed to leave the front door wide open.
00:29:44 Cauterized Plot Cavity While trying to reach his daughters the Army tries to capture Jason because those eggs he gave to Rachel are special spider queen eggs, which the Army needs. He eludes capture because as Transit Authority director Jason conveniently has the keys to every single padlocked NYTA doorway in the city.
00:34:36 Iatrogenic Direction Rachel escapes capture in a parking garage because as one goon steals the eggs he accidently shoots his partner. She calls Jason who is fleeing by subway. Hearing her story he calmly asks, “
What did they look like?”
Hilariously this innocuous question draws the attention of every single person on the train.
00:37:10 Cranial Atrophy The scientist details the spiders are a result of the Soviets discovering aliens in the 1980s.
“
What we found on that space craft defies ALL explanation.”
He then promptly goes on to explain things.
The Russians began splicing alien genetic material with spiders on the space station. Now on Earth they can grow and thrive successfully. So you see, everything here is completely rational and plausible. Your phobias are entirely well-founded.
00:37:59 Plot Stimulant Finally, there is a valid military reason behind this cover-up!
The queen produces an infinite supply of webbing that is a lightweight, bulletproof, stealth material. Any nation with this product will gain a military advantage
”Light years beyond any other nation”.
I’m left pondering now how Kevlar tilted the balance of global supremacy a few decades back.
00:42:43 Commercial Deficiency In a bargain production begging for an infusion of corporate cash to boost the budget it is curious to see this escape scene is brought to you by – WATER.
00:43:21 Iatrogenic Direction Attempting to reach their daughters Rachel and Jason flee into the train tunnels. He warns Rachel not to touch the Third Rail because it is live -- at the same time rats are shown walking upon it unharmed.
01:01:18 Ruptured Visual The military has encountered a “containment problem”. A significant amount of the golf-cart-sized spiders are now scampering around town, barely noticing the automatic weapons fire from soldiers. The animated arachnids on a back-lot city street provoke absentee chills, but good news -- the evil General snuffs it.
01:04:55 Invasive Pathos The queen emerges through the street, exceeding expectations by having grown to the size of a Macys Parade balloon. It crushes the numerous European model cars parked along the “New York” street.
01:07:14 Depleted Character Concentration The girls manage to flee the apartment but on the street the eldest meets her demise under the foot of the queen. Emily is so distraught at her sister’s passing that she almost reacts.
01:18:56 Continuity Failure The queen goes back into the tunnels and for some reason pursues Emily, who holes up in a crawl space, with the queen covering the opening with her spinnerets. When mom and dad discover where she is they seem to have no problem opening a hole in the stealth, bulletproof, military-grade webbing with their hands.
01:20:19 Cauterized Plot Cavity The queen was barely deterred by RPG fire, 60 millimeter rounds, and rockets from the helicopter gunships while on street level, but Jason squares off with the monster and manages to keep it at bay with only a long length of rebar.
01:24:10 Collapsed Climax Considering this film has been primarily located in train tunnels, and we have a Transit worker as our hero, there was absolutely ZERO surprise the queen spider would meet its end via subway car collision.
01:25:09 Weakened Impulse With everything effectively resolved, is there any surprise that they all walk off in a happy ending as a reunited family? The answer is a resounding, “No”.
POST MORTEM Considering the long history of failed spider invasion films there truly are only two questions I can think of that need to be asked. Firstly, when looking over the landscape of derailed like-minded productions what exactly would inspire anyone to undertake such a doomed venture?
But more than that, after making such a decision my main curiosity centers on the second question: Why in the hell would anyone think it was a good idea to repeat NUMEROUS tropes during the endeavor? It is like finding an inedible fruit cake recipe and then making sure to use ingredients past the expiration date.
There is no way you end up with a palatable result.