Spiders on a Plane

Outside of their theatrical outings beginning with Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, this is by far the only good direct-to-home film they have done and honestly their best yet. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good time. Although, I will warn you, if you are arachnophobic in anyway conceivable way, skip this at all costs.

The cast is superb, the visual effects are decent, and there are some rather grisly kills for those hardcore horror enthusiasts. I will admit, at first I thought this would be as bad as their other works, but now I have seen it fully, and it's fabulous.

Right, well while I had never actually heard about the 2024 movie "Spiders on a Plane" prior to stumbling upon it by random chance, of course I opted to watch the movie. Why? Well, I've always found monstrous spider movies to be interesting, And let's just face it, if "Spiders on a Plane" was anywhere near as interesting as the 2006 movie "Snakes on a Plane", then it would be worth sitting down to watch.

The storyline in the movie was pretty straightforward, to the point where it was basically non-existing. Writer Ben Daly put together a script and storyline so simplistic that it was bordering on the fact that there was actually no storyline. But then again, you don't sit down to watch a movie titled "Spiders on a Plane" in the hopes of stumbling upon the next great Shakespearian masterpiece. Watchable, sure, but you're not in for anything extraordinary or grand here.

There are a lot of things in the narrative that made little or no sense. But then again, you wouldn't really expect a movie such as "Spiders on a Plane" to be a perfect cinematic experience.

Truth be told, I actually dozed off three or four times during the 65 minutes that the movie ran. And even while drifting off for a short while and returning to the movie, I didn't miss anything. So yeah, it was not really a grand script that carried the movie.

While the movie certainly wasn't crammed with A-listers in terms of actors and actresses, there were still a couple of familiar faces on the screen. I've seen enough questionable low budget movies to actually be familiar with Danielle Scott and Jase Rivers. Despite the fact that the movie was mostly unfamiliar talents, I will say that the acting performances were actually fair, taking into consideration that there was practically no script for them to work with,.

With "Spiders on a Plane" being a creature feature with spiders, of course the movie-makers would resort of CGI for bringing the spiders to life on the screen. And with it being a monstrous spider movie, having proper CGI that looks good, realistic and brings the CGI animated spiders to life in a way that the audience would actually buy into the premise, would be a crucial thing for the movie. Did it have that? No! Not even remotely. I have to say that "Spiders on a Plane" had some of the worst CGI animated spider's I've seen in movies, and I've seen more than my fair share of questionable monstrous spider movies.

I would not suggest you to rush out and waste 65 minutes on watching director Ben J. Williams's 2024 movie. Some of us sat through this sluggish movie, so you don't have to; you're quite welcome.

My rating of "Spiders on a Plane" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

Heading off for a special trip, a group of friends boards a special plane trip where they try to stay away from the other passengers causing a ruckus on the flight which soon turns deadly when a swarm of killer spiders is released onboard forcing them to try to get the plane to safety.

Overall, this was a pretty decent and enjoyable effort. One of the better features of this one is the generally strong and enjoyable method of building up to a series of disasters in the plane that gets everything set up and starting to get out of control. With the early exploits of this one focusing on the series of traditional struggles within a plane that goes for the majority of the time here involving the passengers going through their different demands and customs before a flight, the starting point to this one comes across rather nicely with the group causing difficulty for the flight crew. The initial series of complaints about shoddy service or the inability to access certain parts of the plane serves as a fine setup for what's coming up later on as these all manage to come back in the second half to be solid callbacks once the spiders are unleashed. When these spiders are unleashed, there's quite a lot to like here with the series of confrontations and encounters that take place involving the spiders getting free and running wild in the plane. With the first scenes in their escape from the cargo hold signaling the disturbance necessary to warrant investigation from the pilots, their discovery of the cobweb-riddled setting allows for a fun start to lead into the incredibly enjoyable takeover of the passengers when they run wild throughout these sections. Featuring a solid mixture of practical spider puppets shown crawling over bodies or the inner parts of the fuselage with CGI creations seeing massive swarms of smaller-size creatures running over the plane taking out whoever they can in graphic means, it has some variety as the different attempts to fight back so they can get the plane to safety gets rather fun with some bloody deaths along the way. These all manage to give this one some pretty likable factors. There are some issues here keeping this one down. Among the main detriments in the film is the flimsy means that signal how the spiders get on the plane in the first place which is immensely silly and not that realistic. The idea of getting them through customs onto a private passenger plane to transport them back to the United States so they can be studied is incredibly weak and manages to just be stupid enough to work yet never be considered plausible or logical in any kind of realistic scenario. That includes the usual series of setbacks associated with the setup including the pilots being incapacitated and unable to land the plane forcing one of the survivors with long-forgotten flying experience to get them to safety which is quite silly and wouldn't be considered at all. Combined with the aforementioned flimsy special effects that don't look all that realistic regardless of execution method, there are some factors here holding this down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

At around 1 hour and 16 minutes there were tears, tears of joy. That's right 1 hour 16 minutes until the end of the movie, then you can cry with joy too.

Anyway, Spiders on a Plane was obviously meant to be based on 2006's Serpientes a bordo (2006), but on a fraction of the budget, and it shows. The genre for this effort was listed as Action, Adventure & Horror - I think they should have included Comedy too, the attempt was there with silly sound effects that made it feel cringe more than funny.

Zack (Gaston Alexander) was supposed to be the comic relief here, but he came across as an actor that hasn't acted before. I suppose that the same could be said about the rest of the cast too. I'm guessing that Jenna N. Wilson (Stewardess) was glad to be out of way early on. Lauren Budd (Beth) was the eye-candy and certainly did look the part.

Maybe I missed what Ben Daly (Writer) and Ben J. Williams (Director) were aiming for. Although I didn't totally dislike the movie, I wouldn't recommend it.

One of my biggest bugbears is the general quality of extras in films and TV. It seems to be that no matter the calibre of the leads in the film in question, it's physically impossible to find those who are even remotely capable of acting like a normal person in normal life go about their day in the background.

I IMPLORE YOU TO LOOK NO FURTHER.

The lad who seems to sleep whilst there is a torrent of spider-led destruction and massacre going on around him at 40 mins is better at acting asleep than I actually look like when I truly sleep. Why I know how I look when I sleep is by-the-by, but I was totally blown away. The look of over-the-shoulder incredulity when the spider had a whoopsie (I didn't know spiders could drool so the only option is this was spider-jizz, so his expression was absolutely fitting for the scenario) just rounded off the performance. Watch this space and Ryan Gosling - look out!

The rest of the film was meh. But that lad. Superb.