Bill O’Byrne’s Bargain Bin Blues: Big Ass Spider

Big Ass Spider $$$

• Directed by Mike Mendez.
• Written by Greg Gieras.
• Starring Alex Grunberg, Clare Kramer, Ray Wise and Lombardo Boyar.

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Phil vs Bill
Greg Grunberg goes from Heroes to zero in this cheesy creature feature that owes more to Sharknado than Slither or Tremors. He plays a pest exterminator trying to save Los Angeles from the King Kong of arachnids after it escapes from a military laboratory. It sounds kick-ass fun but is a chore to endure, from the lousy acting to the ludicrous writing to the laughable production values. Clearly Grunberg’s post-Heroes career is going belly-up as quickly as co-star Ray (Twin Peaks) Wise’s. — Phil Wakefield.

The opening of Big Ass Spider is a cracker. A moody remake of “Where Is My Mind” (by Storm Large) plays with a literally-stunned Alex (Greg Grunberg) stumbling in slo mo down a street full of many kinds of mayhem as people run for their lives from the Big Ass Spider, which is revealed to be going all King Kong on top of an LA skyscraper.

It looks fantastic, it sets the scene, and then they go back 12 hours to the origins of the Big Ass Spider and basically get back into generic B movie stuff.

It’s not bad … there are genuinely scary bits of the growing spider feeding on people and spraying them with acid, running amok at a park full of scantily-clad gals playing scantily-clad volleyball and generally taking any liberties it likes with mammalian life forms.

Then it becomes a full-on bug hunt against a spider imbued with Martian DNA that is impervious to any firepower the movie’s budget can throw at it.

The acting is OK (director Mike Mendez said he couldn’t afford a casting agency so contacted people on his Facebook friends list), the CGI ranges from pretty average to superb (from ICE Animation from Pakistan) and the plotting is a bit A-B-C but with some good setpiece scenes.

It’s really the casting of Grunberg that sends a pretty OK movie into meh-dom.

He’s a commercial pest exterminator who “gets” spiders, and runs his own operation to take down the BAS when most of the top secret military group out to contain the runaway science experiment get turned into spider fodder.

Greg Grunberg in the fab opening sequence with music by Storm Large covering The Pixies

Alas, charisma and charm have missed Grunberg by just enough to make it more creepy than comedic when he hits on the hot nurse AND the hot special forces officer in short order.

And when he and HSFO Clare Kramer finally kiss –  granted, he has rescued her from the clutches of the BAS twice in a day – it’s a bit “oh really??!” There’s gratitude for being rescued from a giant alien spider twice and then there’s falling for this dill.

Yes, there IS a giant spider in this movie. Somewhere.

Plus, he’s not funny or endearing when he tries to be, and his banter with Hispanic sidekick Jose (Lombardo Boyar) sounds like semi-amusing ad libbing the director couldn’t improve upon.

If he’d been a likeable schlub with a good heart you might have cared whether he got the HSFO or hoped he wouldn’t have been turned into spider poop. Ah well. You got a B movie budget, you get B movie lead actors on Facebook.

There are no extras worth watching, nothing after the credits, and if you pay more than $3 at a bargain bin for this, you’re paying too much.

But there’s still enough stuff happening to keep a 14-year-old happy and it was a revelation to see what the Pakistani CGI sector is up to. They certainly provide plenty of bangs for your rupee.

http://kiwispacepatrol.com/film-reviews-from-screenscribe/

Generic military/science team trying to cover up yet another goddam government oopsie: HSFO Clare Kramer, Major Yell-Lot Ray Wise and conventionally unconventional scientist Patrick Bauchau.