(Review originally written at 24 September 2006)
If you're going to watch "Eight Legged Freaks" expecting a tense 'monster' movie with spectacular action and a solid story you shouldn't even think about watching this movie. "Eight Legged Freaks" is a pretty fun parody/homage to the fake and ridiculous monster movies from the '50's.
As a parody/homage this movie is a pretty good and successful one. It uses all of the genre clichés and the movie is filled with some typical B-movie moments, characters and dialog, which obviously were put intentionally into the movie. It makes "Eight Legged Freaks" a fun movie to watch, especially when you're familiar with the '50's B-movie monster genre.
But just because its fun, that doesn't mean that the movie is a great or perfect one to watch. There are several things wrong with this movie, which is the reason why the movie is overall still a bit of a disappointing one. I expected a fun perfect to watch parody/homage but the end result was a mixed movie with a fun and comical undertone but also with a disjointed story with simple characters which makes this movie not always a pleasant one to follow.
The overly present humor makes sure that the movie never gets tense or horrifying. Because of the tone of the movie you can never take the movie and what happens in it ever serious. That's the reason why it lacks in tension, which causes this movie also being far from an interesting or compelling one. "Eight Legged Freaks" is fun but not great to watch.
The movie its story starts off well and promising but soon after that it starts falling flat when it begins to introduce and follow way too many characters. Some of the characters aren't in the movie for like 15 minutes but then suddenly pops up again and the movie starts to follow them like they are some of the key characters of the movie. It makes "Eight Legged Freaks" feel like a disjointed movie, filled with some arachnid attack sequence without feeling an obvious connection. This also adds to the reason why the movie isn't exactly a very tense, exciting or compelling one to watch.
The effects of the movie are only so-so. I don't know it this was done on intention but I don't think so. They should had made the effects look entirely convincing or entirely fake looking. Now it's somewhere in between.
The actors did a great job. They obviously knew to not play their characters very seriously with as a result that they help to set up the right mood and B-movie atmosphere. Especially David Arquette did a great job with this. It was also great to see Scarlett Johansson in a role before her great breakthrough one year later. No way she would had ever played in a movie like this one now, at this moment.
By no means a must-see but when you watch it you'll probably have a good time, if you at least know not to take it very serious all.
6/10
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