Webs (2003 TV Movie) User Reviews

Better than a Poke in the eye with American Idol

[bpbcc · 5/10 · 3 April 2006]

One person commented Webs, raises the issue of, "If you could do it, should you?" And that might be just a little beyond its creator's true intentions but it does speak to a lot of the negative comments. Is Webs a bad movie? Is it low budget? Are the Actors second rate? You bet and I hope they never stop making movies like this.

Webs was made for TV, something important to keep in mind. I'd rather watch Webs over and over again than sit through any Sitcom crap, any unreal reality show or the next big Cop/Doctor/Lawyer Crapfest. Webs wasn't made to take your attention away from big blockbuster movies. Lets compare apples with apples.

Is Webs like Sliders? Well, yes in TV land, like Sliders, Webs is a sort of a Sci Fi film and it does involve dimensional travel but I'm smart enough to know I'm not watching a lost episode of sliders. I thought Webs dealt with the idea of despair and made the alternate Chicago seem like a place of lost hope. Sliders took us to some strange places but it always felt like we were just passing through waiting for the top of the hour to go some place else. In looking for faults, Webs has too many cookie cutter characters where you can remember their traits far easier than their names. There's the guy in peril controlled by greed and the doubting suspicious enforcer. There isn't much excuse for flat characters with fewer dimensions than the setting but, like the plot holes pointed out by others, it just comes down to bad writing. Just remember life is full of plot holes. My eight-year-old boy asks questions about our world that would take more time than you, me and Richard Grieco have left in our lives.

It all comes down to this. If DVD be damned and all we have is PVRs in our dimension, Webs would earn a spot on my hard drive right beside CSI: Baghdad. God help us.

It Looks Like an Episode of "Sliders", Only Worse and With Imbecile Dialogs

[claudio_carvalho · 4/10 · 8 May 2005]

In Chicago, four electricians leaded by Dean (Richard Grieco) come to an old building to disconnect power. They accidentally activate a portal and arrive in another dimension, where Chicago was destroyed by a Spider Queen and inhabited by mutants. The group meets survivors leaded by Crane (David Nerman) and Elena (Kate Greenhouse), and finds the inventor of the portal, Dr. Richard Morelli (Colin Fox), who has been living in this dimension for thirty years. They join forces, trying to rebuilt a portal to bring them back home. "Webs" is a watchable plagiarizing of "Sliders", only worse. Most of the dialogs seem to be written by a person who has not concluded the elementary school, so imbecile they are. Further, the story is illogical, and seems that Chicago is the only city in the world. The scientist trying to start his sophisticated machine with broken wires as if he were stealing a car is very funny. The face of Richard Grieco looks like a white version of Michael Jackson and is horrible. If the viewer shuts-down his or her brain, he or she may like this forgettable TV movie. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Na Teia do Terror" ("In the Web of Horror")

Arachnid Army more appropriate title

[BornAVirgin · 3/10 · 8 November 2004]

I had seen this movie just days before Halloween 2004. I noticed it around lunch-time and it was an interesting description in my menu box so I decided to watch it. Seriously only a movie only suitable for late night TV...you know, after Conan but before the infomercials sorta deal.

Although this movie has very little to do with webs, it does have a lot to do with spiders, refer to my heading if you need a refresher.

I found the idea behind the story absolutely fascinating. A hidden nuclear generator, a scientist and a believable portal...Would have been a good start to a cool fantasy but then it goes downhill after 15-20 minutes.

The cast is poor with no memorable performances, poor quality queen who has had her breasts amplified...considering spiders don't carry breasts. As well as poor sound effects. An obvious low budget movie though the cast has tried.

SPOILER:

4 electricians stumble upon a hidden nuclear generator while on a job. They fiddle with the buttons and open a portal. 2 workers fall into the portal and it closes...scrambling to figure out what is going on, the party still in our world seeks help while the other party observers their surroundings.

Help does not arrive so they open the portal and follow through meeting up in a parallel dimension. They encounter a race of human spiders dubbed soldiers. After a death and chase they are saved by survivors.

Now it gets boring...they hide, talk a bit, try to build another portal then attack the hive. After losing 2 more electricians they open the portal and escape returning to our world...some 200 million years ago.

Sounds interesting huh?

Kill the Queen.

[michaelRokeefe · 2/10 · 6 March 2004]

A Sci-Fi Network original. Not the best. Not far from being the worst. An electrician(Richard Grieco) stumbles onto a "key" that can open a gateway to a parallel Earth that has been taken over by mutant spiders. The mutations have been controlled by a super-sized alien Queen for the past thirty years. She has already eaten up the population of this parallel world that resembles Chicago minus inhabitants. Guess what? Now she must find another world to feed on. The electrician leads a four man team that reluctantly finds themselves with the task of saving the world. The finale confrontation is probably the best part of the whole movie. The cast also features: Richard Yearwood, Colin Fox, Kate Greenhouse, Jason Jones and David Newman. One would have thought that the Sci-Fi Network could have spent more money on special effects.

A reason for RAID

[cyclone259 · 1 September 2004]

Like the unpleasant odor of an overflowing bedpan, it's... "WEBS".

It was amazing to see what the aging Richard Grieco has been doing since his last foray into 'acting', except when I checked to see what movies he's been in recently there were quite a few. Of course it seems that 99.999% of them have the title with the caption (TV). Ironically I knew a girl who just thought he was the hottest thing since Ponch on C.H.I.P.S., if that tells you anything. All I can say is that time has not been kind to his road weary face and his acting abilities are still as sub-par as ever.

Onwards and upwards... The CGI for the queen spider was decent, although not spectacular. The other people involved looked as if they were going through the motions, dutifully hoping the shooting schedule would end so they could go cash their checks before the rent on their trailer house(s) was due. It did have the look of an old 'Sliders' episode, except with half the budget and half the combined acting pool. All I can say is if you like crap, buy a bag of manure because at least it will fertilize your lawn.

Spiders in a parallel universe doesn't necessarily make for a good movie...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 9 May 2013]

For a movie titled "Webs", I had initially expected more spiders and much more webbing, so imagine my surprise when there was surprisingly little on both accounts. Apparently Chicago in an alternate dimension is overrun by strange mutated humans that have been exposed to spider venom; a venom that turns people into spider-soldiers. And more impressively is that this venom causes the people's hands to turn into claws and their teeth to become crooked, protruding and just ridiculous to look at.

"Webs" is a low budget movie, yes, but there is something mildly entertaining about the setting of the movie, despite the lack of spiders and a proper horror element. There was a single spider in the movie, the queen, which was actually nicely enough made, although not with the best of CGI effects. But still, it worked out well enough.

However, the movie is weighed down by a rather unemotional and unenthusiastic actor with a bad talent and even worse hair. Why they opted to cast Richard Grieco for the lead role in this movie is definitely beyond my comprehension. However, I strongly believe that the movie would have been much, much better with someone else in the role; someone who at least had enthusiasm for the job and role he is hired to portray.

Aside from Richard Grieco, then people in the movie generally did good enough jobs with their given roles, despite their characters being very one-dimensional and not really having proper characteristics and personalities as to the extend where we as the audience actually get into the movie and form some sort of bond or attachment to certain characters. All throughout "Webs", you never really got to know any of the characters on any profound level, which made the movie have a very superficial feel to it.

For a horror movie, then "Webs" was rather devoid of scares and a general horror movie. It had a decent enough story, but it just failed to deliver in the horror genre. And as for low budget movies go, then there are far better choices out there to pick amongst for an evening of movie watching.

The movie was predictable to the core, as most of the movies in this particular genre is. But the movie was fast paced and had some moments here and there. But in overall, then "Webs" is rather below average for a horror movie of this particular type.

Like a two hour episode of Sliders

[dean29 · 5/10 · 29 June 2003]

A group of characters are transported to a parallel dimension in which spiders rule the earth. They try to build a portal to get back to their world. Sound familiar yet? Honestly, this has the look and feel of Sliders and about the same budget. The only difference is the characters in Sliders were more interesting. I am not saying that this is horrible but it isn't good either. If you like Sliders then watch this clone on SciFi channel when nothing else is on.

Boring

[Asgardian · 1/10 · 26 February 2005]

There can be no worse criticism for a movie than the word BORING.

Some "bad" movies are lots of fun, some "fun" movies are really bad, but to be BORING means no-one will ever buy the DVD to watch it over and over again.

It appeared to be a movie that employed the drama class from the Antartic, they were all too busy running around to stay warm instead of acting. The lead actor, spoke is a near whisper, husky style voice, damn, it seemed that he was gonna seduce someone, and he didn't care who.

The movie can't make money if it's boring, I hope this one dies a swift, never to be seen again, death.

Richard Grieco Does Strange

[NIXFLIX-DOT-COM · 4/10 · 1 September 2003]

WEBS is a pretty odd movie, albeit slightly watchable. Richard Grieco plays an electrician who gets suck into a parallel Earth overrun by mutant spiders, or something like that. The film itself was made with a modest budget, which explains the limited locales, and the somewhat tedious screenplay that manages to do very little with quite an interesting premise. Basically a 90 minute episode of the TV show "Sliders", and nothing more.

4 out of 10

(go to www.nixflix.com for a more detailed review and reviews of other films in the genre)

Low budget sci-fi crap.

[poolandrews · 3/10 · 16 March 2006]

Webs starts in 'Chicago: Present Day' as four electricians, Dean (Richard Grieco), Ray (Richard Yearwood), Sheldon (Jeffrey Douglas) & Junior (Jason Jones) are about to disconnect the electric to an unused building scheduled for demolition. As they search for the relevant cables & stuff they come across a set of doors that according to the buildings blue-prints shouldn't be there, being nosey & all that they force the doors open to have a look & find a room full of computers & scientific machinery. As they mess around with some buttons a portal to a parallel universe opens, Dean & Junior accidentally 'fall' in with Ray & Sheldon following soon after in search of their friends. Unfortunately they've all ended up in an exact parallel Earth that has been taken over by a mutant spider thing that either eats people or turns them into mutant soldiers with which she uses to protect herself & do whatever she wants them to really. In a desperate bid for survival they team up with a few of the last remaining humans including the original inventor of the portal Dr. Richard Morelli (Colin Fox) who says that with the help of our electrician boys he might (yeah might) be able to build another portal to take them back home...

Edited & directed by David Wu I thought Webs was pretty crap, it's as simple & straight forward as that really. The script by Grenville Case & Robinson Young is preposterous to say the least & has plot holes in it you could drive a tank through, for instance is this film really trying to suggest that a few mutant spider things no bigger than a couple of people in size took over an entire world? How did they do this? If this parallel Earth was the same as ours where the hell was the army? The police? All of our weapons? A few fragile looking spider things against literally billions of humans?! The whole flawed, stupid & downright naff concept constantly bugged me throughout the entire film. Lets not forget that there is a inter-dimensional portal to a parallel Earth in the basement of most buildings that have sat there undisturbed for decades & remain in perfect working order, right? Then there's the nuclear reactor the size of a briefcase, the fact one electrician can make it work perfectly purely by accident as he randomly presses a few buttons in a room that probably had 100's spread over dozens of pieces of equipment & what about the wonderfully thoughtful guy who sets an explosive bobby trap in his base without telling anyone, what if one of his mates had set it off & found themselves blown to pieces by their mates homemade bomb? You wouldn't be best pleased would you? What about food? Do they grow their own in little vegetable patches? I could go on & on all day long about how flawed, ill conceived & poorly written Webs is but I can't be bothered. The character's are clichéd & annoying as is the film as a whole which obviously doesn't help. The only half decent thing I can say about Webs is that it's short & it moves along at a fair pace but when all said & done it's still crap.

Director Wu has to take a large chunck of the blame here, for a start the film looks cheap & the editing that he is credited with is terrible. There's lots of annoying inappropriate slow motion shots that come from nowhere, the action scenes are almost identical & become incredibly boring very quickly. He uses that highly annoying quick cut technique along with a bit of the old jerky camera movement, now I don't know about anyone else but I hate this editing style as it just looks a complete incoherent mess. In fact I don't know a single person who does like this sort of thing & I'm puzzled as to why filmmakers think people do. Forget about any gore, just a few shotgun wounds to the spider zombie soldier guys & they don't have red blood anyway so it doesn't relate to reality in my mind.

Webs was made-for-TV, the American Sci-Fi Channel I think & it looks every bit as cheap, low budget & rushed as you would expect. It's all so bland, forgettable, flat & dull. The special effects are far from special & the spider thing lacks imagination when finally revealed. The acting was OK considering everything else was so poor & I still can't believe the sweater Grieco was wearing in this.

Webs is crap, I can't really say anything good about it other than I've sat through worse films & that's the sole reason I'm not giving it 1 star & a quick glance at the IMDb user ratings for Webs confirms what I already knew in that it has more '1' votes than any other & there is very good reason why...

AND THE PROBLEM WAS?

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 25 June 2019]

AND THE PROBLEM WAS? Four electricians are transported to a parallel world while attempting to shut down an old project in a deserted building. This other world is filled with cannibalistic spider-humans, but on the up side we learn it has no tattoo parlors. Rather than deal with all the positive aspects of the world (no greasy bikers) they decide they need to destroy the spider queen and escape this world. The movie starts out with promise. The spider people have that "zombie" feel to them. This movie was not a career builder for any of the "actors" in it. Horror, violence. No nudity or F-bombs.

Webs is Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Wickyhmongdoms · 9/10 · 10 January 2005]

the movie webs is a very good movie in my view. it is good because it takes 1. a zombie type movie, 2. a spider movie, 3. an alien movie all in one. it is great how they portray the main mother spider. with a single bit she can turn a human into one of her own. and what is better than having an alien zombie spider human attacking and running wild on the streets of an alternate Chicago? let me tell you NOTHING IS BETTER THEN alien spider zombie humans.......yeah. yeah the movie is like sliders but did you think it was that bad.....if you did at least consider watching Webs it is One Of The best Grade B movies i have seen in along time!

Three battles for the price of one

[kenhe · 7/10 · 23 January 2005]

Webs offered me as a viewer several enjoyable movies, one with an alternate world and a believably bizarre and deadly enemy, another with human protagonists at odds with each other while at the same time confronting a common threat, and still another with the drama of people sacrificing themselves for the common good. There was drama and even some effective acting, although it was obvious that this was a low budget picture, and the actors weren't exactly first rate. Still, for me, these actors were fresh faces, and while not as experienced or polished as bigger names, they really threw themselves into their roles. The spoilers :The special effects I felt were quite acceptable and unexpectedly good, especially the Spider Queen, but even her zombie soldiers and their black blood spraying every which way when they were killed was pretty creepy. The professor and his time machine was routine, expected, and mundane, but he played his role quite well, and didn't let it turn into cartoon. The tense final scene in which the leader and the professor sacrifice themselves in order to allow the last two humans to return to an apparently prehistoric era was satisfying as an ending, and along with the science fiction and human drama, I feel made this movie well above average.

Not very good, but could also have been worse.

[Hey_Sweden · 5/10 · 22 July 2017]

'Webs' was another TV movie in a string of them made by the Sci-Fi network. It stars the hunky Richard Grieco as Dean, one of a quartet of Chicago electricians who were sent to an abandoned building to check out an unusual power source. What they find is a portal to another dimension. And in this dimension, the Earth of the future is decrepit and over run by the spider-people minions of a queen spider working towards total dominance.

This one is routine and uninspired, with unremarkable characters for the most part. They're not really fleshed out to where people can actually care about them, but editor / director David Wu keeps the pedal to the metal, delivering passable action at a consistent pace. This is also taken more seriously than a lot of cheese epics of this kind; there are not as many utterly laughable elements. The special effects aren't great but they're not all that terrible, either. It's still better CGI than this viewer has seen in other things.

The performances are very straight faced from all concerned. Grieco is decent enough and he even gets to shed a single tear in remembrance of his comrades. Kate Greenhouse is okay as a tough survivor of this other Earth. Canadian character actor Colin Fox is able to bring some gravitas to his role, and to the proceedings. The rest of the cast is nondescript, but not incompetent. David Nerman, as Crane, has an actual character arc where he comes off as argumentative and suspicious of Grieco for a while, but turns into a hero of sorts.

'Webs' is not great storytelling or TV movie making, but it's certainly not trying to be. Movies like them do have their place in the great scheme of things, and this viewer, for one, would sometimes rather watch junk like this than overproduced Hollywood feature film product.

Five out of 10.

This actually decent...............

[sa3112000 · 29 July 2003]

I know I gave Point Doom a bad rating.I really liked this flick.I liked it so much I recorded it.I knew Richard was a decent actor.To me he in this movie did an excellant job.The cast was good even the guy from the Fast and the Furious.I give Richard props for this.The effects were good for a low budget movie.

Not bad, not great

[black_wolf_1970 · 3/10 · 4 April 2005]

OK we have 4 city electricians who find a mini nuke reactor, turn it in and fall into a parallel universe inhabited by a Giant spider queen also from a parallel universe, who managed to slip through with a few of her kin to take over the earth, but alas she is the only one left? If so why did not the rest of humanity join up and hunt her down. Also what happened to the military, no way a few billion plus round of ammo could have been used up and why hide out in a basement when a lot more defensible places had to available. Also not a dig on city workers, but how is it they knew what a mini nuke reactor looked like and how if they did not have one in the parallel universe, could they reopen the rift? Sorry but there was nothing likable about the movie

Something that may have come from the Scy Fy channel

[jordondave-28085 · 1/10 · 13 October 2023]

(2003) Webs SCIENCE FICTION HORROR

Extremely low budget movie intended for television but available on DVD, involves a group of construction electrical workers, led by Dean (Richard Greico) stumbling onto a time machine which enables people to travel to an alternative universe. In this universe, they would soon come across a huge mutated spider who can transform humans into ghouls. Full of unconvincing special effects, plot holes and second rate acting especially from Richard Grieco. Movie that looked it was financed by the ScyFi channel- not that it matters, for putting it on DVD may be the only way some viewers is willing to watch it.

The last movie I ever rented...

[Marincho97 · 2/10 · 5 March 2017]

...and it's not something I'm proud of.

During my early high school years, I used to rent movies every Friday at my local video store, mostly horror films. One of those days, I asked the clerk for some recommendation since I couldn't find anything interesting enough, so he suggested ''Webs''. He described it as ''Alien with spiders instead of xenomorphs'' and since the DVD art looked sort of creepy, I believed him.

Oh boy, I had absolutely no idea of what I was about to see...

It took me less than 10 minutes to realize the truth; I had been fooled. I'd like to write a good review but I'll just sum this movie up with a single word; CRINGE.

It seemed like they didn't even tried hard, they just took ideas from lots of sci-fi/monster movies and executed them in the worst way possible; just compare the ending to the one of ''Deep Rising''. The acting was the kind of acting you expect to see in these kind of movies, forgettable and bland. The same goes for the dialogue.

And yes, it was the last movie I ever rented. It's not something I'm proud to say, but I don't regret it either, not in the least. It made me laugh a lot, so it gets a few points because of it.

A lot of fun with plenty of great points about it

[slayrrr666 · 9/10 · 30 September 2008]

"Webs" is a lot of fun and definitely worthwhile creature feature.

**SPOILERS**

Investigating an abandoned building, electrical workers Dean, (Richard Grieco) Ray, (Richard Yearwood) Sheldon, (Jeffrey Jones) and Jones, (Anthony Ashbee) are sent in to find a reason why power charges still occur. Discovering a hidden room, they are mysteriously transported to an alternate universe of Chicago. Finding the area overrun by gigantic, ravenous spider-people and are leading a war against the sole survivors of the dimension, lead by Elena, (Kate Greenhouse) Crane, (David Nerman) and Dr. Richard Morelli, (Colin Fox) who also entered the dimension years ago. Desperate to get back to their dimension, they become aware of a plot by the spider-people to take control of the transporter for their own use, leading to an all-out war with them for the dimension-transporter.

The Good News: This wasn't an all that bad entry, and was actually pretty good at times. The fact that there's a lot of action is something to enjoy, as this one's a rather fun action movie disguised as a creature feature. By coming into the realm engaged in a war, it shows some really nice scenes between the two sides. The first sequence where they come into contact with them, outside the bank near the tunnel that the trap is laid, is a great one, as is the several confrontations that occur throughout to show the war going on, which is nicely done. The fact that there's a lot more confrontations spread throughout here, because of the way the film presents the struggle as being a war, we get some great scenes, including other fights as well as two raids which determine the finale being really great. The fact that both of them are so close to each other that they meld into one straight sequence is a blessing, and allowing all of the action, from the battles in the school rooms and to the rather fun closing in the hideout, these are all really great and offer up a bunch of great action scenes. These also work to give the film a fantastic pace as well, which is a good bonus. This one never feels boring or slow and these are useful in keeping it going along rather nicely. This one also has a really high body count, which is also a plus, and many of them are gory as well. There's numerous amounts of stabbing and impaling with the long spears, plenty of splatter from gunshots, limbs ripped off, scratched and devoured, another has half their body ripped up and scratched from an attack, there's another torn in half at the waist and one where the pincers are impaled in the back and come out the chest in front, among other in here. That these provide such a high count is great, as it offers up plenty of opportunity for something to happen, and that makes the size of it impressive and help the war out a little more. The last plus is the relatively fun creatures on display. The spider design is impressive, looking really nice and quite scary at times, especially during the opening battles and a couple of moments where the queen is on-screen. She looks really nice as well, even better than the drones and the fact that this one decides to give them a little bit in terms of social structure complete with rules about what happens and all. These here are the film's good points.

The Bad News: There wasn't much wrong to this one. Despite looking rather cool, the fact that the spiders look so fake and corny is the main one here. There's no real sense of taking them seriously at all since the scenes are nothing more than just laughable and hardly any attempt is made to disguise the fact. It's all very fake-looking and don't really do it justice. There's also the film's other flaw, the completely illogical, contrived and convoluted way of explaining how the teleporting-device works, which is a major selling point of the film. The way it's presented here has little to no way of being coherent at all, and is only given a cursory glance at late into the film that actually comes close to explaining it, yet that's all not very much. These here are all that you can really fault this one.

The Final Verdict: With some great stuff to it and a couple of minor flaws, this one is a really entertaining and enjoyable entry. Give this one a shot if you're into the genre, like the Sci-Fi Channel creature features or find it interesting, while those who aren't big fans of the style should heed caution.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language

Sysopsis

[cameron-pierce · 7/10 · 30 January 2006]

Four electric company employees stumble across a scientific experiment while preparing a vacant building for demolition so that a coffee shop can be built in it's place. They unwittingly activate power to a portal that leads to a parallel world where everything looks identical to their world. In the parallel universe mankind is almost extinct. The last remnants are fighting for their survival against a mutant spider race that turns poisoned prey into mutants under their control. The unwitting heroes join up with the last survivors in an attempt to return to their universe before the queen and her soldiers kill them all. In the end only the primary character and a girl from the parallel universe make it back.

Absolutely Wonderful!!!

[towodi1 · 26 July 2003]

This film raises the question: If you could do it, should you?

The premise of alternate universes was done wonderfully here. Taking into account that evolution and even creation might not have followed the same path on every single alternate. On a principle that every variable or choice ever made or will be made produces an alternate universe. What happens when you mess with this balance? The acting is superb. The plot is realistic, if you concede for two minutes that alternate universe just might be possible. The story is masterfully told. The film is full of ethical and moral messages that you have to look for but are present none the less. This is one made for TV movie that I would cancel a night to the theatre to watch with no regrets. A new film to add to that small collection that truly is "must watch TV".