Camel Spiders

I am a person who juggles my many music commitments with some free time, which I use to watch movies and listen to music. Save a few tolerable ones, a lot of the SyFy movies are terrible. Camel Spiders is no exception, in fact it is one of SyFy's very worst.

As bad as Titanic II, Mega Piranha, 2010: Moby Dick, Battle of Los Angeles and Quantum Apocalypse are, and they are, awful even, Camel Spiders makes them award-worthy in comparison.

To begin criticising Camel Spiders would be difficult as there is so much wrong. Let's start with how the film is made, Camel Spiders is one of the cheapest looking of all the SyFy movies right down from the slapdash filming to the gimmicky way the gore and such is used.

Camel Spiders completely fails in the script and story too. The script contains some of the worst dialogue I've heard, it was all very forced and cliché-ridden. The story isn't engaging in the least, it was to me a silly premise anyway, but the story itself was bland and predictable with too much time wasted on some of the least interesting story ideas of the movie.

The characters I felt indifferent too, they are annoying and underdeveloped and the camel spiders of the title are not menacing at all and laughable in their design. The direction is sloppy, the soundtrack is forgettable, the sound effects sound distorted and are misplaced and the pace is inconsistent with both rushed and pedestrian moments. And need I mention how wooden across the board the acting was? Overall, a terrible movie and one of SyFy's bottom-of-the-barrel type movies. 0/10 Bethany Cox

So, I had mistakenly mixed a batch of Mio energy drink instead of just normal, I don't know, fruit punch or whatever. So, I was up all night. You know you've hit rock bottom when you're watching Syfy at 3:00 in the morning. But there I was, thinking to myself, "Self, I was in Iraq. I've seen lots of camel spiders. Let's give this movie a look." Oh my, where to begin? So many uniform deficiencies and tactical shortcomings, it drove this Army lifer crazy. There's a term called 'flagging' in which one Soldier points his weapon at another. I found myself saying, "Flag. Flag. Flag Flag. Flagflagflagflagflagflagfl.... Oh why am I bothering?" Staff Sergeant whatshernameasthoughitmatters' weapon has had the barrel removed in some shots, but not in others. Sometimes she sports mirrored sunglasses (Not authorized in uniform, by the way.) sometimes they're black aviators. In one shot, the crew didn't even care enough to position themselves so as not to appear in the reflection of her mirrored glasses.

Camel spiders aren't particularly aggressive. The mostly want to be left alone. The idea of them attacking is ludicrous.

The special effects were roughly on par with Tremors 3, that is, about what you could render with a processing power of a Zune.

The acting was elementary... in that it was about what you'd expect from elementary school students.

They didn't seem to bother constructing any sets, just used some abandoned buildings.

I sat through Birdemic. The un-rifftrax version of Birdemic. At least in that movie we got to see Whitney Moore in her underwear, a sight worth the cost of admission, let me tell you. We don't even get that in this movie.

The muzzle blasts were obviously added in post.

Well, enough of all this. This movie isn't even bad in a funny way in the manner of Birdemic. These people seemed to be actually aiming for high drama. Oh boy do they miss. This is a movie that you have on while you're doing something else... in another room.... wearing headphones.

Based on actual creatures that for years have tormented our armed forces in the Middle East, these creatures have now invaded the southwestern deserts of the United States. The Camel Spiders now freely hunt for prey, unafraid of any predator -- including man.

This film should have some redeeming value -- directed by B-legend Jim Wynorski, produced by legend Roger Corman, and starring my good friends Brian Krause ("Sleepwalkers") and Jon Mack... how can this go wrong? I do not know, but it did.

My biggest complaint about this film is that nothing in it is convincing. On top of the bad CGI spiders (which is to be expected from any Corman production these days), there is just no reason to believe the Middle East shots were in the Middle East. The Army uniforms do not look right, and it is not clear why they are wearing camouflage when not in combat.

The story is thin... giant camel spiders attack. When you shoot them, they die. There is no subtext, there is no intellectual theme here. Just a creature feature gone horribly awry.

"Camel Spiders" was so bad it was actually worth watching just for the laughs. This movie has everything you could possibly want from a cheesy horror movie - bad CGI effects, laughable plot, incoherent story, unlimited ammunition, screaming spiders, bad acting, and much, much more.

The story in "Camel Spiders" is about soldiers in the desert somewhere in the Middle East, fighting someone, when a group of big spiders show up. A soldier is killed, and when shipped home, two fairly small spiders sneak into the box containing the corpse of the soldier. Then back in the US, the box is opened because of an accident, and spiders emerge to wreak havoc on the local residents.

Fairly average storyline that borrows heavily from "Arachnophobia" and "Eight Legged Freaks".

There were two spiders in the box, but suddenly there are hundreds of them in the area in the US, ranging from the size of a man's fist to a coffee table. How did they get to be that numerous and that big so fast? That incoherency in the story was just hilarious. Moving on though, while shooting at the marauding spiders, the people had endless amounts of ammo and never reloaded their weapons. And to make matters worse, most of the time people were not even shooting downward where the spiders were, but they were shooting in hip or chest level, that was just hilarious. And the camel spiders were constantly screaming. Yeah, sure, why not?

"Camel Spiders" was one of the worse spider movies that I have seen, right up there with the likes of "In the Spider's Web" and "Spiders 2". However, the movie is so stupid and cheesy that it is actually worth sitting through it, just to see what bad thing is waiting around the next corner. Just make sure you are sitting in an upright position while watching the movie, I was on a couch and I dozed off once or twice.

I had relatively low expectations going into this one (what do you expect with a $500k budget?!), so I'm happy to report I was pleasantly surprised to find a low-budget, fun, monster movie buried in this straight-to-DVD feature.

Granted, there are no groundbreaking special effects or acting, but the writing and story was not nearly as bad (i.e. boring) as some of the other current movies in this league. Paraphrasing, my favorite line: "If sarcasm worked as well as bullets on these bugs, I'd contact you first." My biggest complaint is with the bad CGI effects. Money should have been better spent on spider puppets and buckets of fake blood. The CGI looks like something 15-year-olds create for a YouTube video.

In the spirit of Tremors and Eight Legged Freaks, Camel Spiders should be remembered has one of the better low-budget, Sci-Fi Channel feature.