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I love this movie so much

How sad is this?

Awesome Movie

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Never site a ski resort next to a research facility which is experimenting on giant spiders for military purposes. Or vice versa, I'm not sure which. And, if you do, make sure one of the scientists doesn't decide to spin the research off in his own perverted direction. Because, if you do, you'll get this film, and it really isn't worth it.I will make a point which I have made before elsewhere - this is NOT the worst film I have ever seen: the camera-work is very good, the location work is good, the sound is crisp and clear, so the production team has done its job well (there are plenty of films out there which are almost unwatchable due to technical ineptitude).But the story is trite and predictable, the script is obvious, the acting is no more than adequate, and the CGI spiders fail to convince. This is, at best a time-passer.

As far as low-budget, Sy-Fy channel movies go, I thought this one was pretty fun. Some giant spiders get loose from a secret military research base located near a ski resort. The ski instructor, "Dash," was a former Olympic hopeful who had to give up his dreams after an injury. He is interested in Dr. Sommers, a pretty researcher that stops by the resort from time to time. As the movie begins, a team of young skiers checks in to the resort for two weeks of intense practice. There is almost no one left, as the resort is in its last weeks of the season. (B-movie fans may recognize Connie Young, who played Holly in Troll 2. Actually, they probably won't recognize her, they'll need her pointed out). Eventually, the spiders are running wild and killing skiers left and right. Will Dash be able to redeem himself by rising to the occasion and defeating the mutant threat? Spoiler: he does. The resort-goers band together and hold the spiders off until the military captures them. Dash orders the spiders to be killed, and several of them are, but one final specimen is taken away by the soldiers. Then everyone has a laugh like it was the end of an episode of Scooby-Doo, apparently already having forgotten the bloody mutilation that took place only moments ago.

The federal government is at it again in Ice Spiders. In the mountains of Utah where only a few skiers are having a great old time at a resort, our government has a big old giant laboratory where scientists Vanessa Williams and David Milbern have been breeding some ancient giant spiders with a technique that was first mentioned in Jurassic Park. It's also a plot idea that was used in the Lou Diamond Phillips movie Bats where Milbern goes as batty as the scientist who created those creatures in that film. Your tax dollars at work.The hunters and the skiers are being chewed up, stored and eaten by these critters, the usual mayhem that giant anythings cause among the human population in these films. The guy who takes it the most seriously is ski instructor Patrick Muldoon, once a US Olympic hopeful. He and Vanessa see eye to eye on the giant spiders and each other of course.I guess the idea was breed these things and then loose them on North Korea or Iran or any other country that was giving us problems. As is usual in these films, the critters get out of hand. The whole cast walks around with embarrassed looks on their faces.Vanessa Williams lost her Miss America crown over those embarrassing nude pictures. She looks more embarrassed in this film than those snapshots of long ago ever caused.And well she should.

I remember playing Bomberman 64 as a child. It was a frustrating video game with indulgent level design and tedious item collecting. One thing I loved about that game was its boss fights. Players would fight large monsters at the end of each stage. One of these monsters was a large spider-like creature called "Cold Killer." That was way back in 1997, but Cold Killer looks better than the CGI rejects in Tibor Takács' Ice Spiders.Imagine body armor made from spider silk. It would be indestructible, but impossible to obtain. Now imagine a government sponsored program to genetically alter spiders so that they can produce silk in bulk. Don't neglect to place this secret government facility next to a ski resort which apparently has no computers or cell phone service. Welcome to Ice Spiders! That's the whole movie, seriously. Random people die from poorly edited spider attacks. The actual "death scenes" occur at a distance, and the only gore visible is the aftermath. I was hoping the movie would devolve into stylized violence but it didn't. Sci-Fi Channel films don't have enough budget to produce lifelike monsters which eliminates suspense. Humor would have given us distraction from the terribly rendered spiders.The DVD case will have you believe that the film follows a pre-Olympic ski team while they train. While mostly true, it's misleading. No one on the ski team dies, not even the stereotypically arrogant youngster. The team arrives, is threatened by a single spider, and becomes irrelevant thereafter. Focusing on a small group would have provided focus to the picture. Instead, only bit characters are killed. Most have no dialog so we have no connection to them.Once they arrive, the story shifts to ski instructor Dan Dashiell and sexy yet unconvincing scientist April Sommers. Both are played by subpar actors Patrick Muldoon and Vanessa Williams who don't act seriously. Muldoon is the worse of the two. He responds to each situation with the same tone, whether he discovers a body in the woods or impales a spider with a deer antler. I also find it amusing that his character suffers from a past skiing injury but isn't affected by it now. Williams changes her voice tone and expression enough to resonate to the plot. Her outfits are unusual, though. She is always (I think) shown wearing pink winter clothes, like your wealth friend's super hot daughter would wear. The movie has no suspense, no gore, and is poorly acted. Is it worse than I've described? No it isn't. Some explanation is provided for the spiders' unusual growth, and April explains how they survive the cold. I didn't expect such detail in the script and it saved the experience for me. The entire experience is blasé but at least some part of it is redeemable. It's like tutoring a group of unruly students, one of whom has a natural talent for the subject. While the group is still disinterested, one doesn't have to struggle as much to instruct that individual student.There are many spider movies out there but not many have been released recently. The last Hollywood one (excluding Spider-man) was Eight Legged Freaks. That movie is this one presented effectively as a comedy. It's difficult to imagine giant spiders eating everyone so why not make it funny? You could make it scary too, like Arachnophobia. Both films had higher budgets than this one but they knew what type of film they were. Ice Spiders doesn't know which type of film it wants to be. The screenplay is full of unintended humor and the visual effects aren't realistic enough to be scary. It's a mess of sappy dialog and poor digital animation.* out of *****