ICE SPIDERS (2007)

ICE SPIDERS (2007)

Tagline: Hell Has Just Frozen Over.

(Action, Adventure, Giant Spiders) [R]

The battle for grant money is as bloody as war itself.

In this one, we are taken to a remote ski-training location called Lost Mountain Ski Resort. A young team training for the Olympics arrives and starts to take a class put on by Dan ‘Dash’ Dashiell. However, it doesn’t take long before the skeleton crew at the resort is told that the area is being invaded by giant spiders released from a nearby lab that was trying to breed them for their genetically altered silk. These spiders have the munchies and the animals in the area are sparse, so Dr. April Sommers, Dash, and his students are next on the menu. 

First off, this movie had an okay premise to start with. I love when you throw snow into any scenario, then add a couple sprinkles of humor and throw in a bit of giant anything. However, the big issues with this movie boil down to horribly bad CGI and lack of character development. 

Let me get into this just a bit. The spider kills are fairly gnarly if you are into that sort of thing, so the practical effects they did use were fine. It’s the CGI that was the issue because half these spiders don’t even look like spiders. They look like they got in a fight with an 80’s spray paint factory. It’s pretty bad and even the black spiders just look very goofy. Normally in a comedy like this these issues wouldn’t stand out that much, but we’ve had a lot of spider flicks come out and this one is near the worst when it comes to effects. The other major issue is that we get introduced to a group of Olympic hopefuls at the beginning of the movie. I think I was very much expecting to get to know them and kind of watch them formulaically die off one by one. That sort of happens, but we don’t really care because none of these characters are given a background at all. We hardly even see them. 

The central characters are ‘Dash’ and Dr. April Sommers played by Vanessa Williams. Williams doesn’t quite reach her “Melrose Place” status acting-wise in this, but she is fine in the role. ‘Dash’ is played by Patrick Muldoon who had a string of b-movie appearances that were all just pretty rough and he hasn’t really stopped doing those. His most well-known movie is probably STARSHIP TROOPERS. We also get a little bit of Stephen J. Cannell who plays Frank Stone, he was cool in this but hasn’t been many other things I am aware of. Sadly he passed away in 2010. To round out the most notable cast we also get a bit of Thomas Calabro as Capt. Baker. Calabro has been in 58 projects and counting and also has Director and Producer credits. He is probably most famous for the series “THE LAST SHIP”. 

Overall once this thing gets going it feels a bit chaotic and fast-paced, but not in a good way. It’s one of those movies where there is a lot going on, but you don’t really care about any of it. That factor alone makes this oddly hard to watch without checking out. I had to watch it twice just to do the review because my dog bouncing around on the couch was more interesting. These things happen when you don’t get much character development and the visuals are janky. While we do get to know ‘Dash’ and Dr. April Sommers a bit, they just aren’t that interesting and the chemistry between the two just seems off. 

I have to give this one a 3 out of 7. If you are doing a “Spider Movie” marathon, maybe skip this and go for some of the other, “better” offerings out there.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF SCI-FI PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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