Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

A sleepy truck driver swerves to miss a rabbit on the road and fails to notice that a barrel of the toxic waste he is hauling falls off the truck and bounces down into a little pond, where a local arachnid breeder collects crickets to feed to his various spiders.  The spiders love the toxic crickets and thrive, growing quickly and soon escaping to infest the nearby mining town.  All too soon they grow to enormous sizes and begin to gorge themselves on ostriches, dirt bikers and hapless townsfolk.  It is up to Chris McCormick, the deceased mine-owners recently returned prodigal son, and Samantha Parker, Single mother and town Sheriff, to organize the townspeople and fight back. 

The writing for this movie is pretty good and it is populated with a multitude of fun characters.  Even some of the spiders have personality.  The actors do a good job bringing life to the characters and interacting with giant spiders that aren't really there.  The CGI is good and doesn't look cheap, but there aren't a lot of great special effects in this flick.  There is no real gore to speak of, which helps keep the lighthearted feel of the movie. There are only a few times in the movie where you feel sorry for a victim.  Mostly it's filled with "funny deaths" at the fangs of the monstrous spiders.

It's a fun, lighthearted horror movie that even the faint of heart can watch.  It's got more humorous moments than scary ones and only someone with a great deal of arachnophobia would find it that unsettling.  This is definitely a good show to watch when you just want to relax and have a good chuckle.

3 out of 4

Reviewed by Scott Schwarzwalder

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer