As mentioned earlier, this is truly the year of horror. Creature features are a recurring theme in a "Goodies & Miscellany" bag that perhaps contains far too few of my favourite colours. Spider Island is the latest addition, and I have to say that I did harbour a glimmer of hope, even though the premise is exactly as daft as it sounds.

And here goes: "An invasion of deadly spiders strikes a newly opened tropical holiday resort when a group of influencers arrive to review it and create content."

<bild>Oh, hi Mark!</bild>

Let's start by answering the question of why on earth Peter Westberg, 39, despite this year's crop of creature features, felt that this was something with potential. The answer is, quite simply, the director's name: Christopher Nolan. No, I'm just joking. If that were the case, we'd have been treated to a technically competent three-hour spider horror film featuring men staring blankly and muttering pseudo-scientific platitudes.

No, the name in question is Christopher Smith. He's far from being a favourite of mine, but he's nonetheless proved himself to be a competent director who's delivered some rather entertaining films: he made his breakthrough with the underground horror film Creep, which, to be honest, I still haven't forgotten after all these years. Then came Severance (not to be confused with the Apple TV series), about a corporate retreat that doesn't go as planned. Black Death, starring Eddie Redmayne and Sean Bean, offered some truly gruesome medieval plague-action horror for those keen to see Sean Bean do what Sean Bean does when he's in a production (you know what I mean). Triangle, a survival horror film set on a ship, shouldn't be forgotten either. So there's certainly some potential given Smith's track record.

The cast of Spider Island is perhaps nothing to get too excited about. The young characters are played by actors unknown to me, such as Rose Williams (Reign, Medici), Divian Ladwa (Slow Horses, Ant-Man and the Wasp), and Abraham Lewis (The Toxic Avenger). Somewhat better known is Andy Nyman from Peaky Blinders, Lockerbie, and Wicked. Then we have veteran Tim McInnerny, who actually appears in both Severance and Black Death. He has productions such as Game of Thrones, Notting Hill, and Gladiator II to his name. There's really nothing in the cast that stands out. A shrug, but I suppose one wouldn't expect much more from this sort of film.

So, how does this extremely simple, potentially funny premise fare in the hands of a director accustomed to working with standout horror? Not at all. Not in the slightest. There's really absolutely nothing positive to say in that regard. They make absolutely zero use of the daft and potentially entertaining premise. The dialogue does nothing to lift it either and whilst we're on the subject of the script, I might add this is the product of a collaboration between no fewer than four people. So the saying "too many cooks in the kitchen" has just taken on a whole new meaning.

<bild>Looks like we caught ourselves a piece of eight legged freak.</bild>

Are the effects any good? Well. We're treated to a spider invasion. It's nothing particularly sophisticated. It's rather uninteresting at first, and you don't care about the characters. The father-daughter relationship that's developed tries to be heart-warming, but it doesn't really spark any curiosity. It takes far too long before anything actually starts happening, and the only thing that's even remotely entertaining is probably when Mongoose eats a mushroom and crawls around a corridor. There's never any sense of tension or suspense surrounding the spider invasion itself either. Sure, if you suffer from arachnophobia, you might panic regardless.

But there's something profoundly flawed about a creature feature that doesn't even manage to pull off any creative death scenes. A bit like how most of this spring and summer's shark horror films haven't dared to show their teeth either. Here, we mostly just see a few people falling to the ground and screaming whilst spiders scurry over them. I'm not saying we need to be treated to extreme gore, but could it be a bit more entertaining? Smith does have the experience, after all, but perhaps it ultimately comes down to a lack of budget. Or genuine interest. Or both. Because it feels very much like a film that's been dumped on you with a half-hearted "Do something with this; it's due out in a year. Don't ring me, I'll ring you - bye bye."

Spider Island lives up to its name, as there are plenty of spiders on an island. But it's actually a completely pointless film that doesn't even seem to have been made to entertain. The absolute best thing I have to say about Spider Island, apart from the fact that it does eventually end, is possibly that the scenery is lovely. But I could have gone to Mauritius myself, set up a camera, and captured some beautiful views.

Gamereactor UK

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