Eight Legged Freaks

Time for the aliens and teen-slashers to step aside as Hollywood raises a sardonically arched eyebrow at the B-movie creature feature. Like many of its predecessors, this attempts to win a place within the very genre it's poking fun at, thus functioning as a guilt-free fix for fans as well as a post-modern joke. But it only succeeds in part. The staple ingredients are all in place: small town with an ironic name (Prosperity), everyday hero returning to save the day (Arquette), foxy woman in need (Wurher) - she's also sheriff and a single mother - comically incompetent cop (Overton), sexually developing teenagers. Oh, and a host of hungry, chemically enhanced spiders getting bigger by the minute. By turns menacing and comically clumsy, these CGI arachnids steal the show. The human characters are as sketchy as their counterparts in Them and Tarantula, but to less amusing effect.