Ice Spiders (2007)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Heading to a ski resort, a champion cross-country skiing team and the instructors on staff find the area overrun by gigantic spiders from a military experiment nearby and try to save their guests from the deadly, mutated creatures.Frankly, this here was quite the fun creature feature. What really helps this one here is the high-quality amount of cheesy action featured which runs pretty consistently in here, from the film's central premise of bringing spiders into the freezing environment depicted. The scenes of the creatures out in the snow, as the opening attack on the hunters out in the snowy wilderness, is quite fun for seeing the sight of a spider hunting in the middle of the woods makes for a remarkably cheesy time while setting up the rest pf he action here. The fun times of them stalking the straggle skiers out on the slops or he searching out in the cobwebs covered woods where they come across the cocooned bodies and are then chased around by the creature for some really enjoyable times, as well as offering the set-up for the first of several big action scenes with the spiders in here. There's plenty of fun action with the soldiers in the facility trying to take out the spiders only to be completely wiped out by the surprise ambushes dragging them away while being imperious to gunfire and their other tactics which fail to stop them, and there's the really big fun of the attack on the resort here which is the definite highlight piece of the film. Starting with the early attacks on the skiers out on the lift and going through the rather fun swarming done on the guests leading to the race to get inside and barricade as well as the skiers attempt to get to safety inside the bus this one has plenty of highly enjoyable action in this sequence before the real fun of the creatures breaking through the resort for a fine scene overall. Even the finale offers plenty of fun with the race down the slopes into the trap where they finally defeat the creatures in rather unique methods. As ell as the fact that all of this action doles out some bloody kills, these here are the positive points to hold out over the negatives. The biggest factor here is the usually atrocious CGI featured throughout here, which is among the absolute worst done in the genre here with a never-ending assortment of spider-like blobs hurled across the screen that come off utterly laughable and never once features anything remotely spider-ish about the creatures as there's the new-found feature of a glossy-glass-like appearance which no real spider displays along with the other features here of special chances, interacting failures and unconvincing notions that run rampant throughout the film. As well, there's also the fact that there's no real purpose here why they're trying to capture it again for their studies as that continually puts them at risk because of the clichéd motives of creating them for creating them which is wholly ridiculous and doesn't make sense. These here are the film's flaws.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Ice Spiders is set in the Lost Mountain skiing resort in Logan County in Utah where hotshot skier Dan 'Dash' Dashiell (Patrick Muldoon) works as a ski instructor, local ranger Rick Dickerson (K. Danor Gerald) ask's Dash for help in searching for two missing hunter's on a nearby mountain range which Dash dutifully agrees to. They find one of the hunters dead, horribly mutilated & the other cocooned in what looks like Spider's silk. Then they are attacked a giant genetically created Spider that has escaped from a nearby Government laboratory, with six deadly giant Spider's on the loose in total no-one is safe as it's up to ex-marine & all round hero Dash to go way beyond the call of duty to save the day...Directed by Tibor Takács this is yet another 'Creature Feature' Sci-Fi Channel original that is far from original & is pretty standard stuff from start to finish. The script features everything any seasoned 'Creature Feature' lover would expect, there's the young teenage cast, the all American hero who has to overcome some sort of fear to save the day, genetically created creatures of some sort developed for military purposes, bad CGI computer effects, an isolated location for the Spider's to attack & the human cast to get stuck in, a corrupt scientist who only cares about the experiment & not human life, a military presence & of course a love interest for the lead hero. It's all here in abundance. Ice Spiders is far from the worst of it's kind that I have seen, it's still not a particularly good film by any stretch of the imagination but I did enjoy it to a certain extent more than I thought I would. The pace is good & from the opening Spider attack scene right through to the end the film never slows down & I can't say I was bored although what I was more than aware that what I was watching was still pretty average stuff. The character's are alright & aren't as annoying as usual, the plot is fairly standard stuff & it's clear not much thought went into other than to hang the basic 'genetically creature giant creature on the loose' plot around & there's a few amusing scenes here if your in the right mood I suppose. The dialogue is of often unintentionally funny & the film doesn't seem to take itself too seriously & while I would hesitate to describe Ice Spiders as a good film I certainly don't think it's a terrible one either.There is no build up to the revelation of the Spider's in Ice Spiders & one is seen in it's full CGI glory within the first three minutes, the cheap looking CGI computer effects range from the strictly average to the absolutely awful. There's no real build up of tension to any of the attack scenes either so the film lacks any scares or any atmosphere & the entire thing takes place during the day which makes things easy to see but setting a horror film about giant Spider's in broad daylight cuts down the options for suspense sequences & as such the film lacks any. There's some minor gore here, someone is seen ripped in half, there are a few mutilated bodies, some blood splatter & some mutilated animal bodies too.With a supposed budget of about $2,000,000 the production values are alright, the mountain wilderness scenery is nice enough to look at & poor CGI computer effects apart it's reasonably well made. The acting is mostly poor from people who look like they don't want to be there, Patrick Muldoon in particular looks to be putting zero effort into things. Even though Vanessa Williams was forty three when she shot Ice Spiders she looks about nineteen in it.Ice Spiders is a slightly better than usual Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' although that in itself isn't saying much & is certainly no recommendation. Not bad for it's type but since it's type is usually so awful it's still nothing worth busting a gut to see.

This was a terrible movie to talk about. When I saw this movie on TV I couldn't believe it was real. The lead actor talks in such a weird way it seems like one of those fake movies talk show hosts make up. The ending just makes the movie so bad, the government covers it up, wow. It was also dumb because the plot was a secret government agency had a secret spider mutation project which basically went horribly wrong, the spiders end up eating people, oh yeah the spiders had super powers. I know view this movie as more of a comedy since it was so bad. I recommend if you see this movie on the TV turn it off.Almost forgot at the end the spiders get like hungry for toxic sludge and are blown up by missiles. This movie is ridiculous, terrible, and should never be viewed.

Sci-Fi really outdid themselves with Ice Spiders. First of all, there is a rational amount of ice, and then there are in fact spiders to boot. There's some nice cheesy gore scenes and one really hilarious scene where some idiot stumbles into the spider's horrible forest lair and finds a body in a cocoon. The best thing about this movie is the short bus filled with the rejects from the local high school's special education program. Oh, and while attempting to flee the horrible spiders, they flip and roll the bus into a ditch because one of the mouth breathers decides to floor it on a road that is covered with, you guessed it, ice. And also spiders, surprisingly enough.