Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there. I was just working on my pitch for a new reality show I invented/stole. I figured that what with the writers’ strike showing no signs of stopping that now would be the time to clean up with desperate TV execs looking for cheap alternatives. I’ve got probably 20 or 30 different reality and game shows stewing around in the back of my skull just waiting to put some money into my pockets. But, you’re here for the movie review, right? Yeah, here, let me get that out of the way first and I can go back to practicing my pitch meeting speech later.

When it came to putting together this abominable little infliction of bad movie suffering, I realized that there are literally over 100 Sci-Fi Channel Originals to choose from... Yes, that's right, the Sci-Fi Channel has produced OVER 100 ORIGINAL MOVIES. Scary, isn't it? Knowledge like that kinda gives you this foreboding knot in your gut, like when Hitler took Poland, or the thought of Charles Band getting his own TV network. Spooky.

Upon initial inspection of the crew, there's at least a spark of potential. Director Tibor Takács did bring us the classic childhood horror show The Gate after all, so we know it's possible for him to do at least some things right. That's good. On the other hand, writer Eric Miller has spent most of career coordinating transportation (i.e. calling car services) for a number of forgettable flicks, and the few writing credits he does hold are for movies that didn't seem to get very positive reaction from critics. That's bad. The three top billed cast members all had prominent roles in a popular television drama. That's good. The show in question was "Melrose Place"... That's bad? Good? I don't know, it just comes off as strange to me and I feel the story behind how these three all wound up in the same movie is probably more interesting that the movie itself. Who else stars in this flick? Well, there's Dave Millbern, who was in that Dana Plato lesbian movie Different Strokes. There's also Noah Bastian, who was in "2gether", that MTV comedy series that lampooned boy bands, back when that was the cool thing to do before MySpace and rainbow parties. Oh look, the creator of "The A-Team", Stephen Cannell is in there too! I didn't realize he could act... or thought he could act. What else have we got here? Hmmmm... nobody... nobody... nobody... is that guy related to Forest Whittaker? Nope, never mind... nobody... some random dick cheese from High School Musical 2 playing a character named "Ranger Rick" solely so they can make that joke... nobody... nobody... Ah, here we go! Connie Young from Troll II is in here too! Wow, you just never know who's gonna pop up in there made-for-TV abortions, do you!? Glad she was able to find work again instead of just killing herself for being in one of the worst movies of all time, you know?

In the sprawling hills of Utah, two bumbling hunters named Bob and Rocky are out hunting moose (mooses? meese?), when they find something out there scarier than Bullwinkle: giant cgi spiders! If you don't think giant cgi spiders are scary, consider this: they're terribly done cgi spiders. Your palms sweating yet? They should be. Anyway, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Tard stumble around in the snow for a few minutes, just begging to be injected with paralyzing toxin from these cgi spiders, then wrapped in a silly string cocoon and left to slowly melt from the inside out like wet cotton candy. Have you ever seen a tarantula eat a baby mouse by turning the thing's insides into goo first? Freaky, but otherwise a perfect part of Mother Nature that would make for at least one great gross-out in a movie about giant cgi spiders. Does it ever happen? No. Fucking giant cgi spiders…

Heading to these self same snow-capped Utah mountaintops is a group of irritating young skiers with dreams of becoming Olympic competitors one day! Instead of going to Aspen, where they would likely party and do everything but skiing, their trainer is taking them to the Utah wastelands, where it'll be no cell phones, no internet, and no other way of contacting the authorities for help when they're eventually overrun with giant cgi spiders. You could almost call it a parody of a real horror movie, but I think that would be giving it too much credit and insulting better movies like There's Nothing Out There. At the lodge we also meet skiing legend-turned-instructor Dan "Dash" Dashiell (and here I was hoping to at least avoid any and all a-hole characters with shit-for-brains nicknames), the lodge's owner Mr. Stone (played by the aforementioned A-Team guy), and Dr. April Sommers (who I'm surprised wasn't named April Showers by our genius writer) who is working on a top secret project in a lab located near the lodge grounds and is played by Vanessa "No, not that Vanessa Williams" Williams. Tons of fun.

Scenes of intense "shredding" commence, the likes of which haven't been seen since John Cusak's one-legged race ala Better Off Dead, and our cast or thirtysomethings-pretending-to-be-twentysomethings engage in the type of Mountain Dew fueled slang that I was pretty sure died with the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Gnarly. Speaking of our Olympic hopefuls, I'm not going to bother using any of their names, as they all fit into the "generic young people just there to die" stereotype. The only one I will make note of is the lead dickheaded one, but only because he looks like Mark Hamill's cracked out offspring. I'm not gonna bother catching his name, but you'll see what I mean when you get to the screen shots below. You could probably just skip ahead to those right now if you'd prefer, the rest of the review's gonna be pretty much more of the same complacent rigmarole it's been so far anyway.

If you think these giant refugees from someone's laptop have something to do with April's big top secret science shack out in the woods, then congratulations: despite what your grandma always told you, you're NOT retarded! Yaaaaaaaaay! I would've bought you balloons and streamers, but I had to buy that gay porno with the red Power Ranger in it for a friend of mine... it was a gag gift... unlike the "ball gag" gift I got your mom... sorry, these fucking giant cgi spiders are making me irritable. So, Dr. Sommers returns to her lab from shooting down poor pathetic old man Dash and his "Wanna see my scars?" pick-up line, to find that her three co-workers are all dead: one legless and wrapped up in a cocoon by a big ass black widow, and the other two eviscerated and de-legged on the floor... wait, two questions: (1) How did the spider rip off the uncocooned guy's leg? (2) WHY would the spider rip off the uncocooned guy's leg?! Shouldn't the spider be making meals out of all three victims instead of just generally mutilating and killing the other two? I know black widows are deadly, but are they also just nature's man-hating bitches too?

Of course you can't have a top secret laboratory without a top secret not-so-special ops military unit assigned to burn it to the ground in case something goes wrong. As such, we're given a posse of standard issue bad movie grunts for the title beasties to buffet on in an effort to make the giant cgi spiders look like a credible threat when they eventually attack the ski lodge. Unlike most movies, the writer ignores bad movie canon and actually lets most of the grunts live instead of just killing them off like a platoon of ass wipes with guns. They still do a shitty job of containing the threat, but what are you gonna do? Meanwhile, we've also got Generic Movie Villain #7 in the form of April's boss Professor Marks, played by the Dana Plato lesbo movie guy who plays the "heartless scientist who wants his killer experiment captured to save years of research" just as irritatingly as you'd expect from a jerk-off with a "soul patch". That's not all his fault though, he just happens to be playing the guy in the movie that everybody wants to die horribly at the mandibles of his own creation just so he'll shut the Hell up. Speaking of people I hope to see die in agonizing horror, what happened to those shithead kids the movie was making such a big deal about in the beginning anyway?

Oh, right, there's still 45 minutes left in the movie.

The rest of the movie plays out in the usual Night of the Living Dead fashion, as our group of survivors are trapped in the confines of the ski lodge, barricading all of the entrances (with the exception of the fireplace...) in their stand-off with the genetically altered, steroid juiced spiders... who Dr. Sommers actually believes were being bred so the military could harvest their webbing for use in bulletproof vests and not for use as secret weapons against foreign powers... duh. Obviously the good doctor hasn't seen any of the thousands of "the government is evil" type movies, tv shows, or books out there. Of course Dash will not only save the day with his skiing abilities, but he'll redeem himself in front of everybody and regain all of their respect. More slow motion skiing sequences and generic thrash metal music ensue. No, you didn't fall into the '80s and this isn't a Ski School sequel, it's all actually happening right here, in the Sci-Fi Channel Original: Ice Spiders. It doesn't matter if the government has killer mutant spiders in their control, cuz there's some gnarly powder shredding to be had!

First things first, wow, if there is a worse b-actor than Patrick Muldoon, well, that person needs to be kicked heartily betwixt their legs and pushed down a flight of stairs. Even if his character weren't named "Dash", the guy would still be impotent in the talent department. Holy Scooby-Dum is this man irritating to watch! Everybody else? Meh, not great, but they might just have seemed more tolerable in Technicolor yawns of Mr. Muldoon. On the opposite end of the spectrum though is a kid named James Morris. He only has a two minute bit-part as one of Dr. Sommers’s lab partners-turned-arachni-chow, but wow is he unsettling to watch in those two minutes! I don't know if this guy can actually act, but he can die painfully better than a lot of people! This guy needs to die in every movie from now on, just because he can.

I won't even touch on the giant cgi spiders. I've been pissing all over them the entire review and one more line quipping about how fuck all awful they are isn't going to make any difference. Just trust me on this: they're the worst use of computer generated graphics I've seen in the last 20 years. Remember how amazing the dinosaurs were in Jurassic Park? The level of amazement reserved for how good those effects were, is the same reserved for just how bad these spiders are. The snow and environment effects used around the spiders? No complaints. The spiders themselves? SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT. Could the movie have been saved if Eric Miller had put a little more effort into writing it? Nah, you can't shine shit and a story this generic will never amount to more than it is: just another braindead government cover-up monster movie... with skiing… and fucking cgi spiders. If you can’t do something right, don’t bother trying! This isn’t like running for class president and being consoled by your mom when you lose because you at least tried, this is a friggin’ movie and if you can’t do your movie right, you and your audience are only going to suffer as a result!