Big Ass Spider! – Toronto After Dark 2013

While on his day-off, an exterminator named Alex Mathis (Heroes’ Greg Grunberg) finds himself in the middle of a situation, where a genetically-modified spider has escaped from a military lab and begins to terrorize Los Angeles.  The spider is growing at an exponential rate and the military, lead by Major Braxton Tanner (Ray Wise), are scrambling to stop it before begins reproducing.  Using his immense knowledge of the behaviour of spiders, Alex teams up with security guard Jose Ramos (Lombardo Boyar) and sets out to put a stop to this big ass spider. I have to admit that Big Ass Spider is far from an original film.  Creature features like this has been around since the 1950s and it has only been eleven years since the LAST giant spider film (2002’s Eight Legged Freaks).  However, I have to say that Big Ass Spider definitely lives up to the promise of the title and it was a whole lot of fun to watch.  Even though Big Ass Spider can be considered a comedy for the most part, there are also some quite horrific moments in the film.  Not only were there some jump scares early on, but there is also quite a lot of, somewhat gory, spider against human violence.  There is one big rampage scene in the park, where the spider is shown eating multiple people whole.  However, there is still a big sense of enjoyment watching a giant spider reek a lot of havoc. This film is the first thing I’ve seen Greg Grunberg in since Heroes ended in 2010.  As Alex, he is a goofy, arrogant, but incredibly knowledgeable exterminator.  He helps give the film its overall comedic tone and I liked the chemistry Grunberg had with Lombardo Boyar as Jose.  That said, I wasn’t the most crazy about Alex’s really forced romantic subplot with Lieutenant Karly Brant (Clare Kramer).  The film takes place over the course of a day, so it is somewhat unbelievable that, in this time, Brant would go from hating Alex to loving him.  I know it’s a cliché of the genre, but it still didn’t feel right. With a title like Big Ass Spider, you know that this isn’t a film that you shouldn’t really take all that seriously.  Overall, I thought that the film was a fun creature feature and, while this type of film has been done multiple times before, I still enjoyed it quite a bit.8 | LIKED IT