Wised-up, camped-up creature feature about overgrown arachnids overrunning Prosperity, Arizona. Incestuous horror-film allusions abound: a parrot who squawks, "I see dead people!"; a clip from Them! in a TV Monster Movie Marathon; a shopping-mall fortress similar to the one in Dawn of the Dead; and on and on. Although it presents itself as a comedy, it is somehow less amusing than its straight-faced Fifties forerunners, and paradoxically, thanks to technological advances in creature animation, more frightening at the same time. That, though, is not an even exchange. Nothing, and definitely not technology, matters more than attitude. And the filmmaker who has only contempt for his material and his audience -- Ellory Elkayem, by name -- will earn more of the same for himself. (For contrast, see, in its entirety, the aforementioned Them! It earns neither laughs nor chills so much as admiration.) The same principle applies to the foot soldiers. David Arquette shields himself behind an ironic detachment which proclaims he's too good for this sort of thing, and which proves the opposite. Whereas Kari Wuhrer, normally a straight-to-video actress, can ill afford to act too good for it, and acts quite well. Scarlett Johansson, not apt to make an entire career of the Coen brothers (The Man Who Wasn't There) and Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World), perhaps actually is too good for it. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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