Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

★ 5.8 1h 39m 1,336 votes IMDb
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The residents of a rural mining town discover that an unfortunate chemical spill has caused hundreds of little spiders to mutate overnight to the size of SUVs. It's then up to mining engineer Chris McCormack and Sheriff Sam Parker to mobilize an eclectic group of townspeople, including the Sheriff's young son, Mike, her daughter, Ashley, and paranoid radio announcer Harlan, into battle against the bloodthirsty eight-legged beasts.

Eight Legged Freaks

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Cast

David Arquette
David Arquette as Chris McCormick Age 54 · Winchester, Virginia, USA David Arquette (born September 8, 1971) is an American actor, former professional wrestler, director, producer, and fashion designer. In acting, he is best known for his role as Dewey Riley in the sla...
Kari Wührer
Kari Wührer as Samantha Parker Age 58 · Brookfield, Connecticut, USA Kari Samantha Wührer (born April 28, 1967) is an American actress and singer, mostly credited as Kari Wuhrer, sometimes as Kari Salin. Description above from the Wikipedia article Kari Wuhrer, licens...
Doug E. Doug
Doug E. Doug as Harlan Griffith Age 56 · Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA Doug E. Doug (born Douglas Bourne; January 7, 1970) is an American actor. He started his career at age 17 as a stand-up comedian.
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson as Ashley Parker Age 41 · New York City, New York, USA Scarlett Ingrid Johansson (born November 22, 1984) is an American actress. The world's highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, she has featured multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. Her film...
Rick Overton
Rick Overton as Pete Willis Age 71 · Forest Hills, Queens, New York, USA Raised in New Jersey and New York, Overton comes from a musical family. His father, Hal Overton, was Thelonious Monk's big band arranger as well as a music teacher at the Juilliard Institute. His moth...
Matt Czuchry
Matt Czuchry as Bret Age 48 · Manchester, New Hampshire, USA Matt Czuchry (born May 20th, 1977) is an American actor. He is best known for his portrayals of Logan Huntzberger on Gilmore Girls and Cary Agos on the CBS television series The Good Wife..

Audience Reviews

John Chard 7/10 Sep 16, 2015
Arach Attack!

Spiders escape from a spider farm in Prosperity, Arizona, and become giant man eating beasts on account of toxic waste carelessly dumped in a near by river. Can the odd ball inhabitants of this Arizona town escape with their lives? Or will spiders rule the earth and lay waste to man kind?

Eight Legged Freaks is unashamedly homaging B movie creature features from the 1950s. The likes of Tarantula and Them! have their Pedipalps well and truly watered, in what is possibly the most undervalued of all the modern day creature feature homages. Having no pretensions what so ever, the only real thing not in "Freaks" favour is the usage of CGI, but even that doesn't hurt the film, if anything it adds to the obvious preposterous nature of the genre. I mean how else are we to get 20 foot jumping spiders chowing down on some annoying teenager?

Perhaps "Freaks" is viewed harsh because the cast is relatively C list? Again that is a genre staple, surely? For what it's worth I think they do real fine, David Arquette has oodles of goofy charisma, Kari Wuher makes a fine female ass kicker, and the kids (one a young Scarlett Johansen) are really rather cool. Director Ellory Elkayem, who after doing They Nest in 2000 clearly has bug issues, adheres to genre staples. Kooky western town out in the desert, the inhabitants of which range from near loonies to dopey politicians, and the plot follows the traditional sense of impending doom played for laughs. Listen out for the score from John Ottman, which plays on variants of "Itsy Bitsy Spider", whilst cast a keen eye on John S. Bartley's Arizona camera work.

Whilst not having the savvy scripting of homage daddy, Tremors, or the star appeal of 1990's Arachnophobia, Eight Legged Freaks deserves its place amongst such fun and creepy company. As the tag line says, "Do you hate spiders? Do you really hate spiders? Well they don't like you either". With that, I think it's web well and truly spun, don't you? 7/10

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