Pain, sorrow, empathy and disappointment are just a few of the many emotions felt when characters die in great films. But, in "Eight Legged Freaks," the death of anyone with more than a two-minute cameo leads to an entirely different set of emotions, including relief, exuberance and satisfaction.
A mistake from start to finish, this story of a tiny Southwestern mining town overrun with a myriad of mutated arachnids boasts a cast of insipid characters with minimal verbal dexterity. The head of this group of bumblers is Chris McCormack, badly acted by David Arquette. McCormack returns to town just in time for the great spider invasion, bringing romance, authority, attitude and generally nothing worth seeing with him. Naturally, Arquette is also the hero of this formulaic flop -- a cliche from start to finish.
Like "Independence Day," by the same set of less-than-notable directors, this film follows a distinct and absolutely not subtle pattern of faux-plot: Monsters invade, monsters kill, humans fight, moments of doubt as to who will win, humans triumph and manage to blow up all the monsters in one fell swoop. Basically, a plot line not worth the price of even a matinee ticket.
But the actors and directors are not fully responsible for the pain that is "Eight Legged Freaks." When it comes down to it, the spiders are what really make this film a bust. Although the multi-variety spider idea is initially tempting and far broader than the spider concepts for films such as "Arachnophobia," the various breeds of spiders are only frightening as small web-crawlers, accessing that frequent human fear of tiny creepy-crawlies in the night.
Once they mutate, however, it's another story. Monstrously huge, the spiders no longer even resembling what they once were and what we once could have feared. They are comically computer-created and move with a funny jumping, lurching speed that separates them from the surrounding human fodder.
Furthermore, the eight-legged freaks chirp and squeak -- yes, certain species of spiders do indeed make such noises, but try amplifying them hundreds of times over to match the giant spider size and the effect makes each one seem more like a parakeet than a death-weapon.
Match these effects with a slew of no-name actors and actresses who struggle with the shoddy plot lines and flat-lining jokes, and there really is no good reason to see this film -- unless, for some reason, you take pleasure in the deaths of others.
