Spider finally came to a city near me this weekend. I'm a David Cronenberg freak and I've been dying to see this movie, couldn't understand why it was taking so long to get released. Now I know. After driving 45 minutes to the art house cinema where the movie is currently playing, I prepared myself to be amazed by Cronenberg's genius. Not this time. This movie sucks. About halfway through it, I really wanted to leave but I knew that someday I would have to watch the whole thing and I sure as hell didn't want to sit through it again. I'm sure "Spider" is a wonderful book and I know Cronenberg did his best to translate the literature to the screen, but what is the point? Ralph Fiennes doesn't speak a single word of intelligible dialogue. There are huge stretches of the film where absolutely nothing happens. There is one kind of interesting character played by John Neville, but he's not really that interesting. There is nothing compelling about the characters or the plot or anything. I have never left a movie feeling so cheated and upset. Just a huge waste of time. I don't understand how this movie even got released. It boggles the mind that anyone would want to watch it. Technically perfect but what is the freaking point? This is the guy who did "Scanners", "Videodrome", "The Fly", "Dead Ringers"? Until I suffered through "Spider", I thought the crappiest movie Cronenberg ever did was "M. Butterfly". "Spider" sets a new standard for pointlessness. I dare you to watch "Spider". If I could turn back time, I would have rather spent an hour and 40 minutes hitting myself in the head with a hammer so that maybe I could personally experience what it might be like to have mental illness. To say watching this movie is like watching paint dry doesn't even come close to describing how stupefyingly boring this movie is. At least paint finally dries, this movie grinds on and on and on. A friend of mine asked me, "But is there a payoff at the end?", I said "Yeah, it turns out he's crazy, really crazy." People started leaving 30 minutes into it and I yelled "lightweights!" at every single one of them. Trust me, this movie really, really, really sucks. I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy. Imagine the most boring lecture you ever had to sit through in college and you're somewhere in the ballpark of just how terrible this movie is.
