Movie Review: Itsy Bitsy (2019)

Synopsis: Still piecing her life back together after the accidental death of her son, Kara, a private nurse and single mother, moves to the country with her two kids to take care of an elderly man who has spent his life collecting artifacts from around the world. When one of her client's artifacts is smashed by an intruder, it releases a large killer spider that puts her and her children at risk.

Who's in it? The movie stars Bruce Davison, Elizabeth Roberts, Denise Crosby, Arman Darbo and Chloe Perrin.

Review: I was looking for some horror movies to watch for my wife and, figuring you can't go wrong with giant spiders, added this one to our library. We had an opportunity to finally watch it last night and my opinion of it was a bit mixed.

I think one of my biggest complaints about this film is the same one I have with a lot of horror films, it takes way too long to get going. Roughly three-quarters of this film seemed to focus on Kara (Roberts), her depression, her drug addiction and her struggles to hold her family together. In any other genre, that would have made this a good movie. In a horror movie, it was just too much filler and we were beginning to wonder if the spider would do anything.

Once the film did finally get going, it did admittedly end up being one of the better horror films I've seen in a while. The filmmakers did a great job building suspense, whether it was Kara's daughter, Cambria (Perrin) walking around in a spiderweb-filled attic or having the spider in a position where it added a little extra creepiness to a scene (such as it being under the bed while Kara is walking around barefoot).

The spider's fast acting venom added an additional element of suspense because it only took one bite for a victim, at minimum, to be rendered incapacitated by the creature. The fact there were kids involved only made that part of it much more intense because, if an adult can be dropped quickly, how fast would it kill someone who is much smaller?

I do feel the film dropped the ball a bit when it came to the spider's supernatural side. It was basically a spirit that was released from an ancient egg but, other than its size, didn't seem to have much else going for it. Heck, it and its offspring even seemed somewhat easy to kill for a creature that was effectively the result of a curse. The movie was still decent without the spider possessing anything extraordinary but it just didn't seem to do the stories about its history justice.

Final Opinion: This is actually a fairly decent thriller that did have me on the edge of my seat. I just wish the filmmakers would have edited out at least some of the filler material in the beginning so it didn't seem like it took an eternity for something to happen.

My Grade: B-