by Allisonnnnn Wednesday 19th October 2011

This Geek In Netflix: In the Spider’s Web

I accidentally watched a made-for-TV movie for today’s feature, which is bad enough on its own, but upon further research, I discovered it was a made-for-Sci-Fi-Channel movie… which explained the CGI quality.

In the Spider’s Web premiered on Sci Fi in August 2007 as the second in the still ongoing “Maneaters Series” put out by RHI Entertainment.  And it’s not very good.

Of all the actors, the only one you may recognize is Lance Henriksen, who has a laundry list of geek-related media he’s been somehow part of.  We’re looking at things like Aliens, Terminator, Millennium, AVP, Mass Effect, The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the Pumpkinhead movies, and the wonderful Super Mario Bros. movie of ’93.

Hey, I own it.  Don’t pretend that you didn’t like it and certainly don’t pretend that you didn’t fantasize about Samantha Mathis (Princess Daisy) because we all did.

And while I’d love to sit here and rhapsodize about Ms. Mathis, we all know that I’m just avoiding talking about this full-screen movie.

If you think that this looks like she’s being blown away by a blast of spooge, you aren’t alone.

The basic plot is as follows: some tourists (whose names really don’t matter) are on a trek through a jungle in India.  A day’s walk outside of their destination, one of them gets bitten by a deadly spider.

Her reaction to the bite is quick, and soon she’s sprouting pustules around the bite, turning pale, talking about burning sensations (no, not like that).  Her fellow trekkers (no, not like that) decide that it would be quicker to get her to a nearby village where there is rumored to be an American doctor in residence, rather than try to get her to the next town.

They show up to the village, where legend tells that the inhabitants worship spiders, and find the doctor (as played by Mr. Henrisken).

Now let’s take a moment to discuss this doctor guy.  The writer decided to go the route of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan playwrights and name this character in accordance to his shortly-to-be-revealed true profession: Dr. Lecorpus.  Le corpus.

Really?  Couldn’t just whip out a phonebook and pick a name?  Had to be all “clever,” did you?  

Holy fuck, it’s awesome!

Anyhow, the doctor takes the bite victim into his amazingly cool looking spider-shaped hut and does his “OMG-I’m-an-evil-spider-worshipping-occultist” voodoo and makes the other trekkers leave the tent where they see the doctor’s brother.

Said brother is a deformed mutant who walks around the village with caul of spiderweb around his head and a large saber in one hand.  Just a little FYI.

More FYI: a “caul” is a cap or hat of net formerly worn by women.  Insert “the more you know” rainbow here and send me thanks in the form of Amazon gift cards for educating you on outdated fashions.

While they mill in the village, the remaining trekkers decide to split up: three will hike to the nearest town and try to get medical supplies sent to the village for their friend and two will stay in the village with her.

The two that stay decide that, hey, while our friend is dying in a spider-shaped hut, why don’t we go to a spider-shaped temple? 

So these two brainiacs run around with a handheld video camera in this temple just packed full of deadly CGI spiders and intense webs that Spiderman would be proud of.  Until, of course, they get squish a spider, get separated, and then are taken out by deadly CGI spider assassins.

The other three trekkers have arrived in the nearby town and discovered that, at the police station, the walls are loaded with missing persons flyers.

Whoever heard of that in a horror movie?

She chose down?  She chose down!  Aaaaaa!

After discussing the situation with a seemingly apathetic sergeant, the trekkers check into their hotel and spend a lovely night not being eaten alive by spiders.

Not as apathetic as he appears, the sergeant sets out with a pack of supplies the very next day, only to discover a shiny new helicopter touching down in a field where Dr. Lecorpus is directing his manual laborers to hand over creepy metal ice chests to the helicopter crew.

Soon it is revealed that Dr. Lecorpus is using spider venom to paralyze his victims to harvest their organs to sell them to some unnamed organization who, in return, bring him spiders from all over the world.

You’re the sergeant.  If you decide to scurry back to your town and get more firepower, turn to page 18.  If you decide to go guns ablazing into the fray, turn to back 7.  If you don’t have a choice in the matter because they totally spotted you way before you ever spotted them, go to the next paragraph.

Not as awesome as the spider-hut.

At this point, the movie continues its very simplistic path through the trekkers coming together with the sergant, defeating the evil Dr. Lecorpus, and running from the scary CGIpders.  Er, CGI spiders.  Eventually, the Indian police come in and save everyone who hasn’t already died.

Except for John.  Who’s John?  One of the trekkers.   He’s a dude that treks with other people that trek and that’s all you get to learn about him.  Or any of the other characters.  This movie is pure, sludge-like plot.

I suppose that I’ve been spoiled by recent SyFy movies like Sharktopus, but I really wanted a “good” creature feature with this viewing and I felt let down at the movie’s completion.  Most of the spiders in this movie weren’t real– even the ones descending on strands of web were plastic toys being lowered in front of the camera.

Yeah, that bad.

My childhood would have been so much better if my parents had bought me one of these.

While it did have plastic toy spiders and even a magical “spider web bridge” across a chasm, you might be wondering what didn’t it have.

What It Didn’t Have

Is the movie boring?  No, not really.  Is it bad?  Not any more than an early episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.  It’s pure fluff.  This is the mindless stuff you put on when you’re feeling sick and fading in and out of consciousness and you don’t want to watch anything that would actually make you really want to stay awake.

Which is exactly what I recommend this movie for.  Have the flu?  Have a bad break-up?  A stressful day at work?  Want to just shut down for a while and not be subject to too much stimulation?  Get on your Netflix account and fire this baby up.