Manthast Absolutely amazing

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

thesar-2 No one's arguing Richard Moll (Night Court) isn't set to win any awards, but when your budget is just big enough to afford roughly 5 spiders, you can only claim so many D-List "headliners" for your When Animals Attack sequels.I promise, mostly to myself, that I won't spend too much time on this crud, but I watched this because I do love those When Animals Attack creature-features and I was attempting to recreate that Turkey Day feel of MST3k years past by watching this during the Thanksgiving weekend. Unfortunately, this was worse than bad. It contained as much air time for the spiders as Angelina Jolie did in Gone in 60 Seconds. (For those who don't know, I believe she spent more time for her posters, as the spider here, than her acting in that film.)Pirates invade a ship, kidnapping idiots we don't care to know, and passerby boatists Jason (Cromer) and Alex (Niznik) investigate and then get stranded in the ocean via a storm. Picked up by another passing boat they're greeted and wined and dined. But, is there a catch?Hell, yeah, it's for the viewers to wait another hour to realize they're part of some Dr. Grbac (Moll) experiment on spiders. It's basically a thirty-five cent version of Aliens but without any of the tension, excitement, acting, dialogue, originality, intrigue, character depth, special effects or budget. Make that: ten cents, then.Don't waste your time. I can see where the actors actually tried to do something with nothing, but it's not even a movie to say: It's so bad, it's good and at least it's about spiders. Cuz, it ain't!Side Note: I guess it was originally subtitled: "Breading Ground" until it hit video. Perhaps because they realize there is no "ground" actually in the film. Does it really matter? Would it sell further with…or without the added non-spider reference?

Michael_Elliott Spiders II (2001) * 1/2 (out of 4) Your all-American happy couple (Stephanie Niznik, Greg Cromer) are out at sea on their boat when a huge storm comes in. The boat sinks but thankfully they're picked up by a ship but soon the husband becomes worried that something strange is going on and he's right. It turns out that there are experiments being done and soon large spiders are out for blood. I didn't think it was possible for this sequel to have a small budget than the original movie but it in fact does. You can tell that the production team decided that they didn't want to spend too much money on this thing as it features a lot more dialogue scenes and this here certainly takes away from some of the fun, gory action that was non-stop in the original. Whenever you have a movie like this that has too much dialogue you often run into the problem of it just sounding stupid and having it go no where. That's pretty much what happens here because we get countless scenes where the woman, as dumb as she is, tries to convince the guy that he's losing his mind. She even thinks this after finding all sorts of bodies so that should tell you something about her. This banter between the two becomes quite annoying because the writing isn't the greatest in the world and the performances just aren't good enough for us to buy what they're selling. Another problem is the two main characters are just rather bland and not for a second did I like either one of them. The entire subplot with the evil Captain never works and neither does the entire story dealing with the spiders. When the spider finally starts to attack I will admit that I thought it looked pretty good. Some of it is CGI but there also appears to be a puppet of some sort being used and I thought it was nicely effective. Sadly the attacks aren't all that memorable and in the end we're left with way too much boring chatter and not enough of what counts.

battyman1 Maybe it was because I just got finished trying to watch "BloodMonkey", which was SO horrible that it inspired me to set up an IMDb account and contribute a review.Maybe it was because I was then trying to write my review for "BloodMonkey" while watching "Spiders II" and wasn't paying _real_ close attention. I guess I missed the worst of the plot holes, like _why_ the Mad Doctor was growing all those giant spiders, or _why_ he had to feed them people, rather than something somewhat easier to get, like, say, sheep or cattle. This was still far better than BloodMonkey's "let's just go hiking out in the forest, where the Professor knows about (but has completely underestimated) some giant-brained monkeys!" Maybe it was just the quality contrast between "BloodMonkey" and "Spiders II", but this strikes me as the best Sci-Fi Creature Feature that I can readily pull out of my memory (I mean, just _none_ stand out as even decent). Admittedly it was _far_ short of great, and it started out a bit slow after the first (action) scene, and the effects (particularly the sinking of the protagonists' boat) were on the cheap side (After their boat sank, I honestly do not believe that they actually shot Niznik & Kromer in actual water. It looked like they added the water in postproduction). But giant spiders with sharp, pointy teeth can be convincingly scary without having to be really perfect. Except that they made a lotta growling and bellowing noise (another reviewer compared this to elephants). Spiders don't make noise, do they? Neither do people, when they get a pair of giant spider's fangs stuck through both of their lungs. I did NOT, however, find myself shouting at characters for making unbelievably stupid mistakes with the worst possible timing, which is how I would invite violent assault if I were to attempt to watch, for example, "BloodMonkey" in a public theater.In fairness, I had Stephanie Niznik mistaken for Milla Jovovitch throughout. Go ahead, shoot me, but I've never watched either of them much. They're both pretty easy on the eyes. Water sticks to neither of them, unfortunately, which is a shame. I recall Milla going swimming in "Resident Evil" and thinking we were gonna be in for a potentially great wet little-red-dress sequence. Alas, no. They hadda dry her off to continue filming. I was getting my hopes up for something similar when Niznik stripped to her tank top. I mean, there's water dripping from the upper deck everywhere, it's only a matter of time before she gets soaked. No, sorry, can't go there, even if the movie _does_ have an R rating. On Sci-Fi, of course, they had to cut all sex, nudity, and language, derating this movie to PG. Too bad. There was a shower scene which could have really fried, but more likely didn't, anyway. I'd go rent it, but I'll bet it wasn't that big of a deal.Practically all of the action is concentrated into the last half-hour (make that 20 minutes without commercial breaks), ramping up just before and pretty much 'officially beginning' with the aforementioned mild stripdown. It took 'Alexandra' an amazingly long time to realize that her husband was _right_, there _was_ something seriously fishy going on onboard the boat that had rescued them. Hubby had been trying to tell her this for about two days, but she'd ignored his concerns until he disappeared. It finally came together for her only when the Captain locked her into his cabin with him, a nice dinner, and a bottle of wine. It's from there out that Stephanie Niznik (and, in fairness, the script) makes this movie as good as it is. Reminiscent of Milla in "Resident Evil" and Sigourney Weaver's multiple "Alien*" performances, she's scared but fairly cool (if not quite as frosty as Ripley), quick, and determined. She forcibly denies the horny captain's advance, kneeing him (and a few sailors, as well) in the groin, and generally does a fine job once the fighting starts, using whatever weapon is at hand, improvising when there's none, and never ever indulging in 'screaming just for the sake of it'. She _never_ gives up (even when faced with going _back_ inside, a la Ripley, to fetch a vaccine and save Hubby's life), and is sharp enough to be the only character in the movie who doesn't let a spider sneak up upon them. The bottom line is that she manages to save not only her own ass, but her husband's as well. She tallied up an excellent accounting for any action heroine, except when she tried to interrogate the Mad Doctor by pressing a gun to his forehead (instead of shooting out a kneecap at range), which was her only serious mistake. It didn't quite cost her, though, 'cuz a spider snuck up behind the Doctor just in time! Gratuitous? Of course, but amusing anyway, particularly because they only did it _once_. Every other win, she had to _earn_.The final scene, which was probably a reprise of the finale of the first "Spiders" movie, seemed forced and out of place.I can't leave out the pair of spiders on the deck which were indulging in a tug-of-war over one of the sailors. It's entertaining little details like that which lift decency up over crap, and "Spiders II" has almost enough of them, while also easing up on the futile screams.I'd be maybe tempted to give it more than 5 stars, but come on, we're talking about a late-night Sci-Fi Creature Feature here, which can't possibly count as more than a "B" grade movie at best. The Filthy Critic might even give it three fingers, if he saw it uncut, and was feeling generous, and liked Stephanie. It would depend on the shower scene.

Coventry The first "Spiders" is one of my guiltiest guilty pleasures in the horror genre, simply because that movie is just too stupid NOT to enjoy! It had grotesque special effects, featured every single cliché of the freshly revived creature-feature sub genre and it never took itself too seriously, which resulted in a fairly entertaining & campy flick. Part two regretfully is the complete opposite of all that. It tries to be scary and original, which is a pretty bad approach if you're dealing with mutated spiders that look as gigantic as a house! Despite the remotely promising opening sequences (featuring an authentic pirate attack!) and a lot of gory killings near the end, "Spiders 2" is also a very boring film and that's really unforgivable for a post-2000 horror production. The sail boat of a young couple sinks during a storm but they're rescued by a huge cargo ship. The exclusively male crew members are insufferably friendly even though it's more than obvious that they're naughty villains, especially the annoying captain of the ship and the stereotypical mad doctor with the white beard. It takes another tedious half hour before it's confirmed that the cargo ship actually is a floating research lab where the sinister scientist feeds human bodies to over-sized tarantulas. The ramshackle old cargo ship forms an interesting location, but crap-director Sam Firstenberg nearly isn't talented enough to make full use of it. The CGI-effects are atrocious, as are the acting performances and it's really pathetic to see how everyone involved in this Nu-Image production takes this thing so damn seriously.