Main cast: David Arquette (Chris McCormack), Kari Wuhrer (Sheriff Sam Parker), Scott Terra (Mike Parker), Scarlett Johansson (Ashley Parker), Doug E Doug (Harlan), and Rick Overton (Deputy Pete)
Director: Ellory Elkayem

When you spend millions of dollars to create a movie that looks like a cheap B-grade movie, you definitely need to get your head checked. That’s what I can tell Ellory Elkayem and her team. Eight Legged Freaks takes a lot of effort to be a parody of a B grade movie, but it’s neither scary nor funny.

Instead, it ends up a painful bore of a movie. Jumping, squealing giant spiders – looking most rubbery, I must point it – stop being hilarious the third time I see them hopping around like constipated mad bunnies.

A silly scientist ends up producing fast growing mutant giant spiders (don’t ask) that end up breaking loose and attacking the whole town. We have the usual small kid, the lone hero (David Arquette, badly cast), the feisty woman, the teenager who screams a lot while whining that her mother sucks in her strictness, the wisecracking black guy, old people who behave dotty – oh wake me up when the world ends, really.

The “scary moments” are in fact repetitious (spiders jumping on people and sucking the juices out of them, muah muah muah). I find myself polishing my nails (I finally decided on fuchsia just for the heck of it), talking to friends on the phone, and making myself some sandwiches while spiders jump on people again and again and again in the TV. At first I pause the movie when I do these things, but during the last half hour, I don’t even bother. There’s no sense of urgency in this movie, just the movie folks running a one-note stale joke right into the ground and under.

Come to think of it, if they have giant pink bunnies hopping around and flattening people, this movie may be worth watching for once. Eight Legged Freaks isn’t just missing a hyphen, entertainment value is also missing.