Camel Spiders (2011)

Directed by: Jim Wynorski

Writers: J. Brad Wilke, Jim Wynorski

With a title like this, you might thing that Camel Spiders is a part of the recent animal cross breeding craze that gave us such masterpieces as Sharktopus and Piranhaconda (to be honest, I haven't seen any of them, but unfortunately I'm going to). Unfortunately, camel spiders are real animals that look just like regular spiders, except that they're bigger and more CGI-driven. Reality is so boring!

 

The movie in Middle East or some similar place where the American troops are fighting some unnamed enemy. Suddenly, the fight is over, because the enemies have all been eaten by Camel Spiders (!). Some of those sneaky bastards find a way to infiltrate the coffin of a deceased American soldier and they are transported to America, where they start to multiply and grow to a horrible size. Oh, yeah, they also kill.

 

Alas, this movie was doomed right from the beginning. The computer animated spiders look absolutely horrible and it would have been a show-stopper even if all other things worked perfectly (which they don't). Everything is so generic and sterile, the setting is ugly, the killings laughable, but the worst thing is that everyone is so serious - the actors really seem to believe the horrible lines they're given, not to mention that they try their best to look terrified by the unconvincing spiders, which would bring a truck load of unintentional laughter just if it all weren't so damn boring.

 

Jim Wynorski hadn't made a good movie in about 20 years and he doesn't seem to have the intention to start now. Even his softcore films are more bearable than this.

Nine Miles Down (2009)

Directed by: Anthony Waller

Writers: Everett De Roche, Anthony Waller

 

With its pretty high production values, Nine Miles Down was a refreshing change from the crap about which I usually write here. Unfortunately, the story didn't exactly follow, so it all boiled down to a large overall "meh".

 

The entire movie takes place in a remote drilling station somewhere in Sahara, which the security patrolman Duncan McL..., sorry, Adrian Paul, is sent to investigate after the contact with the scientists working there had been lost. As he arrives, he finds the place completely deserted, with some disturbing writings on the walls, signs of struggle and a gratuitous slaughtered jackal in one of the rooms.

 

Obviously, the first thing you want to do when you arrive at a place where something sinister had obviously happened is to spend the night there, so he does, and surprisingly he encounters no demons, ghosts or anything else during the night. However, in the morning he runs into a hot blonde scientist who just jogs around and doesn't seem horribly shaken by the things that happened.

 

Our suspicions immediately arise. Is she evil? Is she the Devil? Is the place itself evil? Is Adrian Paul insane? Why the hell is Waller showing us extreme close-ups of Adrian Paul's ass? How are sad events from Adrian Paul's past related to the horrifying visions he experiences?

 

While I appreciate some of the tension and the mystery surrounding the place and the characters, the movie simply didn't "do it" for me. Generally, when a character torments us too often with his or her visions and flashbacks and whatnot, I get bored rather quickly. Nine Miles Down wasn't boring, but I never cared about any of the characters enough to appreciate the ending or feel any bit moved by it or some crap like that.

 

One of the reasons for me not enjoying this that much might be the high expectations I had from the authors - Everett De Roche wrote some great films like Long Weekend, Razorback and Fortress (which was prevented from being one of the best films ever made only by the weaker direction), though, in all fairness, he did also write crap like Storm Warning, and Anthony Waller directed An American Werewolf in Paris, which most people hate, but for me it was great fun. Of course, this is all highly subjective, and if you read the reviews, you'll see many people enjoyed it more than I did, so... give it a shot.