Creature
Spider/ Alien Hybrid

Alternate Titles
Spiders

Country
USA

Director
Tibor Takács

Writers
Joseph Farrugia
Tibor Takács & Dustin Warburton

Story

“When a Russian space station is over-run and subsequently crashed by a horde of mutated Spider/alien hybrids, the military quickly quarantine the surrounding area in the hopes of using the spiders for their own agenda. However when his daughter is stuck in the spider-infested quarantine, the local subway controller must reconcile with his estranged wife in order to save their daughter, avoid the military and finally defeat the Spiders – in 3D!”

Cast

• Patrick Muldoon – Jason
• Christa Campbell – Rachel
• Sydney Sweeney – Emily
• William Hope – Colonel Jenkins
• Pete Lee Wilson – Dr Darnoff
• Shelly Varod – Phoebe
• Jon Mack – Doctor Stella

Creature Connections

• Camel Spiders – Jon Mack
• Ice Spiders – Tibor Takacs, Patrick Muldoon
• Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep – Tibor Takacs
• Mansquito – Tibor Takacs, Christa Campbell
• Manticore – Jonas Talkington
• Mega Snake – Tibor Takacs
• Mongolian Death Worm – Jon Mack
• Rats – Tibor Takacs
• Snakeman – Shelly Varod
• Starship Troopers – Patrick Muldoon

Trailer

Gallery

Review

Working on a remarkably smaller budget than other 3D creature features, Spiders 3D has a much smaller scope and as a result is a much smaller success. But a success nonetheless.

Spiders 3D contains a necessary degree of effort and professionalism. The Cinematography is atmospheric and the sets are detailed. Takacs’ direction is solid with smooth camera movement that enhance the scenes rather than distract and interesting shots that lazier directors don’t ever think of. The locations are always busy with choreographed extras and convincing stuntmen. This all creates an impressive sense of scale that suggests a budget far greater than the $7 million Spiders 3D claims to have been produced on.

Patrick Muldoon and Christa Campbell lead the capable cast. Both leads do very well giving solid performances in their emotional scene and providing a satisfying degree of conviction. They also do plenty of climbing stunts, driving stunts, fighting stunts and lots of CGI interaction which makes a nice difference. Most notably, the young Sydney Sweeney has the potential to be successful in the horror genre based on her performance here.

The 3D is well utilised and greatly enhanced by Takacs’ smart direction of composing shots with plenty of foreground/ background disposition, creating immediate depth for the 3D to embellish. The opening sequence of the desolate Russian space station is a beautiful piece of 3D film-making, as long as you can excuse the slightly crappy CGI. Speaking of the SFX, the crappy CGI causes a problem later on as the darkening effect of the 3D glasses makes the highly detailed, dim coloured spiders rather hard to see, especially when they move quickly.

For a film which puts so much effort into being plot-driven, Spiders 3D is surprising uneventful. There is a lot of exploring subway tunnels, talking about trains, exploring abandoned subway tunnels, hiding from soldiers, reconciling and very slow exploration of the story and the reasons for the Spiders existence. The editing is a little choppy with a lot of story problems being solved off-screen which comes across as very lazy.

The titular Spiders are pretty horrible and are treated far more like a plot device than an actual threat, with the military taking the role of antagonists. Their design is detailed and they are rendered with varied textures, a good range of motion, nice animation and are scary enough to invade the nightmares of any arachnophobe. The Spiders maul and eat people with their mandibles rather than externally digesting their prey and can fire their webs like Spider-Man to web humans and pulls them in for attack.

Ultimately the successful 3D and impressive scale make Spiders 3D enjoyable but not enough to make it ground-breaking. It is definitely one of the better killer spider movies with solid performances, great creatures and plenty of action.