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Anyone seen this movie on SciFi? I only caught part of it. It apparently involves a group of Super-Duper Ex-Army Mercs leading some Smartypants Scientists into the jungle interior of an island, where they encounter Giant Mutated Spiders! Oh, and there's a Shocking Plot Twist in that the Obligatory Butch Female Soldier (well pilot really; why are the main female characters in these things always pilots?) is only along for the adventure because she's searching for her Long-Lost Brother. The group encounters all sorts of icky critters, including giant ticks, a big, centipede-like cross between a spider and a snake, and, of course, the obligatory Spider The Size of An SUV.

I found it to be tiresome (and I suspect it's a SciFi original), mostly due to how easy it was to pick out who was going to get killed and who was going to survive. Let's see...

1. Native Bearer Types who are awfully superstitious? Yup, check, they're little more than spider kibble.

2. Wimpy Nerdy Nice-Guy Scientist who keeps wandering off by himself? Check. Seriously, can't one of these kinds of characters survive a monster movie just once? Just once?! (And there's even a Killer Shrews / The Swarm ripoff in that while meeting his end he records his final moments into a tape recorder like a True Scientist. I'd say he has the most horrific death of all were it not for:

3. Expendable Soldier With Bandana! This guy dies by having ticks burrow into his body and then burst out of him; the Token Black Soldier shoots him out of mercy.

4. The Shifty Scientist With a Foreign Accent who continually antagonizes everyone? Yup, he's here too, and he also dies because he runs away and encounters the spider by himself and has foamy venom puked up onto his face.

Oh yeah, and major spoiler here, but Butch Soldier Chick's missing brother turns out to be dead. They find his skeletal remains cocooned in a spiderweb. Funny, I thought I already saw that in Jurassic Park III.

I didn't even finish watching the movie. After everyone that had "Dead Meat" written all over them bought it and it was just down to Hunky Hero, Butch Chick, and Some Other Lady, I knew it would be ridiculously simple to pick out who was going to live and who was going to die. So after Shift Scientist Guy ran off and got killed I just threw my hands up in exasperation and turned the TV off. This honestly rarely happens with me. A movie has to be extra-special stupid to make me completely lose all interest in it.

Maybe at a later date I'll rewatch the movie in its entirity and maybe even learn the actual names of the characters (which is usually my specialty!), but not now. So for now, just consider this my first impressions of the film, and feel free to correct me if I've made any incorrect assumptions about how it all turns out.

I rented that movie expecting to hate it completely.  I actually did wind up enjoying it, even for as predictable as it was.  Then again, that's a good portion of horror for you.  The only character list I wasn't able to accurately predict was Deep Blue Sea.

I found this one rather painful.  It was as if the writer never developed boundaries for what the creatures could be.  They were making it up as they went along for all I could tell.

The characters drove me completely nuts.  Found them all annoying and hoped they would die.  Oh, and didn't somebody stick their bare hand into a dark burrow on a tropical island?  (To get the one girl's boot, I think.)  Even without killer space arachnids running around, that seems like a bad idea.

Terrible film that I own, but have only watched once.  I'd give it a single slime - it is not unwatchable, just awful.

Yeah, she lost her shoe down the hole and Mr. Genius decided sticking his entire upper half down there was a good idea, well after he knew something strong had tried pulling her down there.

I actually enjoyed this.  I liked the characters quite a bit, thought they were well done.  I enjoyed the animosity between some of the characters and the camaraderie between others.  The critters were all over the place, but I didn't' care because at least they menaced the characters in interesting ways.  The action moved along pretty well and it kept me watching 'till the end.