Content Warning
Obviously, the name infers spiders so, if you have arachnophobia? This film is not for you.
There’s a specific art to creature features that I feel has been neglected over the past decade or so. Fundamentally, they’re ridiculous: overgrown ants, giant iguanas, etc. but while looking absurd, the best ones juggle preying on one’s fears of the incomprehensible state of nature while also instilling a sense of levity. A spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, if you will.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s my media-induced, paranoid, delusional nightmare.”
EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS nails that precision. It’s exactly what it sounds like: radioactive waste causes a a severe number of spiders to grow to enormous heights and ravage the town that goatee-adorned Chris — played by a surprisingly winsome and knowing and game David Arquette — revisits, partially because he still pines for the current town sheriff, Samantha Parker.
“Lose the face fuzz before you [visit Samantha]. Makes your mouth look like a stripper’s crouch.”
This film could be perfunctory and lazily executed, but instead it’s far more inventive and savvy than it needs to be. One scene, involving a spider and a cat, is particularly impressionable by utilizing dry wall and only showing what it needs to show. It also liberally borrows from Spielberg’s bag of tricks, especially with its usage of a plucky, overly smart youth that helps save the day.
“This is a town hall meeting, not the WWF.”
Additionally, the effects are vividly energetic with all of the spider fur and leaping movements.
It’s well-paced and the flailing town is surprisingly well-developed with a mayor who brought in an ostrich farm and constructed a poorly attended mall. You really can’t ask for much more from 90 minutes of escalating mutations.