Spiderhole (2011)
Steve Barton
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Starring Emma Griffiths Malin, Amy Noble, George Maguire, John Regan, Reuben-Henry Biggs
Directed by Daniel Simpson
Here we are again. Damp, dilapidated building. Four people locked inside. Evil madman taking them out one-by-one. The only difference? In this latest flick from the UK our victims do it to themselves by committing an act of total and complete stupidity.
Spiderhole tells the tale of four students who decide it would be a good idea to find a condemned building to live in so they can “squat” there rather than having to pay rent like the rest of the world. One of them even gleefully exclaims, “It’s unlawful but not illegal!” It was at this very moment when all I could think of were the words … Please let them all die horribly.
Within a few minutes our protagonists find their shit-pit to live in, and they immediately install new locks, build a fire, drink and screw — all without even bothering to check out the second floor of the structure for … I don’t know … anyone else, maybe? Not even a found pile of bloody clothing can dissuade them from staying. These cats are bound and determined to live in squalor! The next morning our group awakens to find all of their locks changed, thereby leaving them trapped inside of the filthy menacing structure.
Then it happens. One-by-one they’re captured by a madman hellbent on tying them to various things to perform insidious operations on each of them.
Spiderhole borrows liberally from every movie with similar themes from the last twenty years. Saw. Hostel. It’s all in there in some fashion. So okay, director Daniel Simpson isn’t looking to reinvent the wheel here, and he’s certainly not making high art. At least we’ll have some good violence to dig on, right? Wrong. Almost everything in the flick happens off screen. Even worse? Given that there are just four victims, the only semi-redeeming parts of the movie are bookended by ridiculously tedious, long breaks between the action padded with lots of crying, sniveling, and hissyfits that only serve to bore the viewer.
Honestly? There’s not much else to say. In the end we crawled deep into this Spiderhole and all we found was a truly beaten dead horse. What little there is to see here, you’ve already seen pulled off way better than this. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.
1 out of 5
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