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List Price: $14.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 18742
Released: October 16, 2007 |
| Our Price: $6.78 |
| Used Price: $2.55 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A scientific experiment goes haywire creating an arachnophobic nightmare. If theres a way to stop them somebody better find it soon before they kill everything in sight! Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 04/22/2008 Starring: Patrick Muldoon Thomas Calabro Run time: 86 minutes Rating: R
Ice Spiders Reviews:
"The Phone's Dead....This Is Totally Not Cool." 
2008-11-11 - "Ice Spiders" is about giant government-spawned spiders versus the most annoying ski team in history. Essentially there's an evil government program to genetically engineer giant spiders for military purposes. You see, the government got a prehistoric arachnid from Afghanistan and spliced it with modern spiders to obtain their silk, which is bulletproof.
Vanessa Williams is Dr. April Sommers, a big-league expert on arachnid genetics, and is ignorant of the sinister overtones of the work at the lab. The male protagonist is Patrick Muldoon as Dan "Dash" Dashiell, a formerly great skier and now a has-been teaching a bunch of sniveling, elitist high school age skiers in preparation for the Olympics.
To say that Williams can't pull off the role of a brilliant scientist is a huge understatement, but she and Muldoon are actually the most likeable cast members. I was so ready for the spiders to eat all the teenagers, that every minute they were onscreen and uneaten was more and more agonizing (and made even more so by extremely "cool" dialogue like "that was some nice carvin' by you, man", and frequent use of words like "gnarly").
The box art is not representative of the film. The box shows gigantic spiders the size of an airplane hangar, but in the film the spiders are about the size of a golden retriever. The spiders are very poorly executed CGI and are about as realistic and scary of a science fiction creature as "Alf". The writing and acting are very amateurish, and the film is full of ridiculous situations that take away from the film. My favorite scene involves a school bus full of teenagers: it's completely ludicrous, yet entertaining. (The same theme was done much more skillfully with angry ravens in "Kaw".) Sadly some of the teens do survive the arachnid holocaust: hopefully, though, they will never be in another film.
I gave the film two stars, which is generous, because in spite of the cast, the film was sometimes quite entertaining, although in a way I suspect that the producers didn't intend. If you like "Mystery Science Theater 3000", you'll immediately see what I mean.
Ice spiders 
2008-06-19 - Giant spider movie? what is more creepy? This version is a made for SCI-FI Channel production so i guess you know what your gonna get. this movie would have been better if the siders were as big as the box art but alas they were only a fraction of that size. This is your typical goverment project developes big spiders for secret project gone wrong tale. it has it's momments and ultimately it's not horrible just not very original or for that matter scary, famous Producer Steven J Cannell ( The Rockford Files ...NBC ect..) even has a bit role in this! Attactive young cast but spiders are just goofy CGI, I love bug monster movies but this is just average PG stuff.
A decent giant bug movie
2008-03-31 - I actually wasted money renting this instead of watching it on the SciFi channel on Saturday night which, around my house, has become Bad SciFi Movie Night. The spiders are obviously CGI and occasionally appear to be from a different movie. Most of the actors are unknowns and this movie won't be aiding them in their efforts to get noticed by Spielberg. The recycled plot is that scientists have been studying spider silk (stronger than steel and flexible) and, for some reason, one scientist genetically engineered the spiders, which grew larger and larger and then escaped.
I like scifi when it's big and dumb (hey, I watched MST3K for nearly 10 years) but, honesly, I've seen better giant spider movies.
Breed Them And They Will Get Out
2008-03-09 - Horror films and books have taught us a few simple truths. Don't disturb the ground anywhere that is named after the Devil (i.e. Hobb's End). Don't seek to quietly retire to a small town with a creepy name. Finally, if you breed giant bugs, vermin, whatever, they will get out no matter what your security precautions. So is it any surprise when a facility breeding giant killer spider has a containment problem? Now put the facility right near a popular ski resort and lunch is served.
Despite the wonderful cover art, these are not your Tarantula-type giant spiders. These are more like big dogs (of course one film claimed that is spiders were as big as housecats then humans would cease to exist so these are plenty big enough). Like with Eight-Legged Freaks, we get an assortment of arachnids plowing through the skiers, military, and anyone else who happens along. The critters are pure CGI and could have been better rendered but for the most part the effects work well-enough. Cast is o-kay with reasonable acting abilities. The one thing really missing was humor. Eight-Legged Freaks really works because the humor offsets the horror. Here the horror is only offset by the bright sunlight on the pure-white snow. Check it out.
Cover is decieving
2008-02-18 - The first thing that comes to mind with this movie is that gigantic spiders like the ones on the cover do not appear. The spiders are, obviously, gigantic by spider standards but they are smaller than humans.
A few things happen when people begin to encounter the spiders and something is usually happening in terms of plot. It's not the repetitive "monster(s) appear, someone dies/disappears, monster(s) vanish, survivors have no idea what happened, repeat" formula seen in a lot of other movies.
I found it reasonably entertaining despite the inaccuracy of the front cover.
