Webs

WEBS is a pretty odd movie, albeit slightly watchable. Richard Grieco plays an electrician who gets suck into a parallel Earth overrun by mutant spiders, or something like that. The film itself was made with a modest budget, which explains the limited locales, and the somewhat tedious screenplay that manages to do very little with quite an interesting premise. Basically a 90 minute episode of the TV show "Sliders", and nothing more.

4 out of 10

(go to www.nixflix.com for a more detailed review and reviews of other films in the genre)

Like the unpleasant odor of an overflowing bedpan, it's... "WEBS".

It was amazing to see what the aging Richard Grieco has been doing since his last foray into 'acting', except when I checked to see what movies he's been in recently there were quite a few. Of course it seems that 99.999% of them have the title with the caption (TV). Ironically I knew a girl who just thought he was the hottest thing since Ponch on C.H.I.P.S., if that tells you anything. All I can say is that time has not been kind to his road weary face and his acting abilities are still as sub-par as ever.

Onwards and upwards... The CGI for the queen spider was decent, although not spectacular. The other people involved looked as if they were going through the motions, dutifully hoping the shooting schedule would end so they could go cash their checks before the rent on their trailer house(s) was due. It did have the look of an old 'Sliders' episode, except with half the budget and half the combined acting pool. All I can say is if you like crap, buy a bag of manure because at least it will fertilize your lawn.

A group of characters are transported to a parallel dimension in which spiders rule the earth. They try to build a portal to get back to their world. Sound familiar yet? Honestly, this has the look and feel of Sliders and about the same budget. The only difference is the characters in Sliders were more interesting. I am not saying that this is horrible but it isn't good either. If you like Sliders then watch this clone on SciFi channel when nothing else is on.

In Chicago, four electricians leaded by Dean (Richard Grieco) come to an old building to disconnect power. They accidentally activate a portal and arrive in another dimension, where Chicago was destroyed by a Spider Queen and inhabited by mutants. The group meets survivors leaded by Crane (David Nerman) and Elena (Kate Greenhouse), and finds the inventor of the portal, Dr. Richard Morelli (Colin Fox), who has been living in this dimension for thirty years. They join forces, trying to rebuilt a portal to bring them back home. "Webs" is a watchable plagiarizing of "Sliders", only worse. Most of the dialogs seem to be written by a person who has not concluded the elementary school, so imbecile they are. Further, the story is illogical, and seems that Chicago is the only city in the world. The scientist trying to start his sophisticated machine with broken wires as if he were stealing a car is very funny. The face of Richard Grieco looks like a white version of Michael Jackson and is horrible. If the viewer shuts-down his or her brain, he or she may like this forgettable TV movie. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Na Teia do Terror" ("In the Web of Horror")

...and it's not something I'm proud of.

During my early high school years, I used to rent movies every Friday at my local video store, mostly horror films. One of those days, I asked the clerk for some recommendation since I couldn't find anything interesting enough, so he suggested ''Webs''. He described it as ''Alien with spiders instead of xenomorphs'' and since the DVD art looked sort of creepy, I believed him.

Oh boy, I had absolutely no idea of what I was about to see...

It took me less than 10 minutes to realize the truth; I had been fooled. I'd like to write a good review but I'll just sum this movie up with a single word; CRINGE.

It seemed like they didn't even tried hard, they just took ideas from lots of sci-fi/monster movies and executed them in the worst way possible; just compare the ending to the one of ''Deep Rising''. The acting was the kind of acting you expect to see in these kind of movies, forgettable and bland. The same goes for the dialogue.

And yes, it was the last movie I ever rented. It's not something I'm proud to say, but I don't regret it either, not in the least. It made me laugh a lot, so it gets a few points because of it.