Spiders on a Plane

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.

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.

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.

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 Serpentes 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.

Ignore the 10 star reviews. It's a classic C grade I was fooled into thinking was a hidden monster gem by these reviews...

It's poorly acted and poorly written. It's horrible to look at and worse to listen to...

If you like trashy movies this is fun (I got a good laugh)...

But it is NOT a good movie...

There are moments of so bad it's good that redeem it enough to be worthy of 3 stars... but even that is a stretch...

You can tell the cast did the best they could with what they had...

But in particular the randomness of events alone blows out any form of comprehension and makes for a confusing ride.

3/10 at a push.