- Directed by: Mike Mendez
- Written by: Neil Elman, Mike Mendez, Ashley O’Neil
- Stars: Steve Guttenberg, Nia Peeples, Patrick Renna
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY_Cp3rRR3s
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Steve Guttenberg does a fine job playing an actor thrown into a horrific situation, with a great supporting cast. Despite horrific deaths and mass destruction, this manages to be funny. A big budget was at work here, but not on the CGI – but it gets the job done. It’s a mix of serious and ludicrous that is very entertaining in a dumb fun kind of way.
Spoilery Synopsis
We watch some bad men beating up a former special forces CIA FBI Spy guy. They want him to talk, but he’s not a superspy for nothing. No, wait– he’s an actor in a movie. He hates bugs, but this movie’s about bugs, so that’s a problem. Colton West leaves the set, but he’s a has-been who used to be in a bunch of bad action movies.
On the drive home, he hears about earthquakes on the radio. He gets a call from his angry manager, Arni, and then his wife, Olivia, who wants to know why he’s so late. Suddenly, the mountain erupts in a ridiculous explosion of CGI fireballs– and giant spiders! These giant tarantulas are covered in lava themselves, and Colton wastes no time getting away from the disaster.
Both Arni and Olivia feel the quaking, but they haven’t seen the spiders. Colton gets home, and she thinks he’s lost his mind. For some reason, she doesn’t believe his story of fire-breathing giant spiders. He grabs his shotgun and leaves to find his son, Wyatt, who’s way too old to be a teenager.
Olivia calls her friend Doris, whose little dog won’t quit yapping. When the dog does finally shut up, there’s a good reason: he’s been toasted, and she’s next. These spiders like their meat cooked.
Wyatt, meanwhile, is downtown riding his bike with friends when they see another big explosion and helicopters flying over. He and his friends soon find a lava-filled hole in the pavement that explodes spiders. They hide in a warehouse, but several of them are injured in the process.
Colton, meanwhile, has lost his car due to the tires melting, and can’t catch a ride. He finally flags down a tour bus, and they’re happy to finally see a celebrity.
Olivia checks out Doris’s house and finds several spiders eating her well-done friend. They chase her all the way home, where she sees the city on fire. Now she believes Colton’s story. About this time, the spiders are all over the news, as is Colton’s stealing a tour bus.
Colton’s bus literally runs into a pack of spiders, with hilarious results. The busload of foreigners all think they’re in a movie and cheer on cue.
A spider breaks in and goes after Olivia, who is very armed and dangerous. The spider doesn’t stand a chance.
Colton and his new sidekick Chris run into an actor-turned-pirate in downtown Hollywood. Suddenly, the spider-quakes return. We watch as various Hollywood landmarks collapse and dozens of spiders crawl out of holes in the street. Colton runs into Fin Shepard, the guy from all those “Sharknado” movies and they admire each other for a minute until Pirate Jack picks up Colton and Chris.
Olivia gets on the military evac truck; they say it’s really bad in the city. Wyatt and his friends try to evade the spiders, who are slowly burning their way into the warehouse. Colton, Chris, and Jack hide in the La Brea Tarpit Museum with Dr. Struble. Struble is a scientist, and he tells them that the spiders and volcanos are one: Lavalantula! If they kill the mother Lavalantula, they’ll all die. Colton immediately heads for the queen.
Olivia’s truck and soldiers all get wiped out, leaving her on her own. She ends up driving a huge army transport back into town for her family.
Wyatt and Eli watch their girlfriend, Jordan, go into convulsions after being bitten by one of the spiders. She soon explodes into a million little spiders, who promptly burn up Eli, leaving Wyatt on his own.
Colton gets a text telling him where Wyatt is just as a really huge spider comes out of the tar pit. Pirate Jack gets fried, but Colt and Chris fight off the huge spider.
Somehow, Olivia finds Colt and they drive off together to save their son, who’s been making use of a fire extinguisher to battle the spiders. They arrive just in time to find him, but they lose their truck in the process.
Colt remembers the liquid nitrogen they used on the set of the bug movie this morning, and he wants to use that against the spiders. When they get to the studio, Colt sees his Red Rocket outfit, designed by NASA for his old superhero movies. Teddie and Marty are there from his movie as well. They know all about liquid nitrogen, and the group assembles to make a plan to beat the queen spider. They have some explosives too!
The group enlists other actors and film crew to spread out and plant canisters of frozen liquid nitrogen around the holes where the spiders live. Colt gives a long, yet rousing speech to raise their spirits as the hopeful music swells. It’s all very over-the-top.
As they drop bombs, Marty makes funny voices and Colt can’t keep a straight face. Meanwhile, various actors drop tanks into holes all over town. Colt, Marty, and Teddie work together to battle the unstoppable horde, but they do stop them.
Colt leaves the others and goes after the queen. The others detonate the bombs, which are a little excessive. They don’t, however, get them all, so there’s another battle– until the queen breaks through the ground and comes up, and it’s really something.
Colton, in his Red Rocket costume, has all the C$ and uses his jetpack to Iron-Man his way over to the huge spider. They climb the side of a skyscraper, and Colt drops the C4 Right into the spider’s mouth, killing it.
The news all reports on Colt’s heroics. Most importantly, his family now respects him, which is good. Marty says he smells a sequel coming on…
Brian’s Commentary
There are an amazing number of cameos and special appearances by familiar faces, especially if you enjoyed the old “Police Academy” films. Steve Guttenberg is basically playing himself, a washed-up actor who now lends his face to cheap movie posters. He’s… perfect for this role, and he does really well here, taking it all very seriously– but not really.
It’s a cheaply made horror-scifi-comedy parody of creature features, basically in the same vein as “Sharknado” and similar films. If you’re into those, you’ll probably like this.
It’s goofy, campy, stupid, and very entertaining all in one
Kevin’s Commentary
It was funnier than I expected. Just because there are loads of horrific deaths and mass destruction doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time. At the same time, there was more suspense than I expected too.
Dr. Struble with the best movie title usage ever “The Mayans had a word for it: Lavalantula.”
The CGI is pretty obvious in the film, but the horror aspects are taken seriously. It’s a real hybrid of a movie. Spoof, reunion, horror, comedy, action, suspense, eco disaster, stupidity. And the ending was totally believable.
Overall, it was super entertaining, which is the fundamental reason to watch.