Webs

Plot synopsis:
Four electricians, Dean, Junior, Ray and Shelly, are sent to cut off the power in a condemned building before it's torn down. They notice there's a difference between the floor plans and the actual size of the building. Upon breaking down a door they discover an old laboratory, which encloses an atomic pile (vintage nuclear reactor) powering a weird machine in the floor. They unwillingly set off an alarm and then boot up the device. Dean falls through a dimensional portal that's created and Junior goes after him, while Ray and Shelly read a journal left behind by the scientists. Dean and Junior appear outside in a deserted and web covered Chicago. Dean goes off to have a look around, while Junior waits for the others. Shelly, by reading the journal, realizes that the researchers were attempting to make a gateway to a parallel universe and he and Ray decide to step through the portal.
Finding no one on the other side of the dimensional portal, Ray and Shelly set off and get a fright when Junior leaps out. Junior leads them to a broken-down security van, with much money in the back. Junior, Ray and Shelly start celebrating, while Dean comes running back armed with a block of wood. Junior suddenly says "Guys" and steps forward with a claw in his stomach. Junior dies, and more creatures (spider people) attack the others. A group of humans save the electricians and kill the creatures. They fight more of the creatures, and head back to the portal, Dean stops to help a survivor and the portal closes leaving him trapped. On Shelly's and Ray's side, the atomic pile shorts the portal. Shelly starts trying to fix it, while Ray goes off to call for help.
The survivors bring Dean into their hideout where they meet Crane. A female survivor, Elayna, insists that Dean come with them to see "The Old Man". She blindfolds him and they set out for the base. Meanwhile, Ray comes back saying that everyone thinks he's insane and refused to send anyone. He did however come back with a small arsenal of guns. Dean meets the Old Man, who is revealed to be Dr. Richard Moreli, the inventor of the portal who got stranded here 30 years ago. Dean tells him his friends are on the other side and trying to fix it. Dr. Moreli tells him when he opened the portal 30 years ago, it let in the giant Spider Queen, who set out to enslave or eat most of humankind.
Elayna says the "soldiers" (the spider people) used to be normal people, but the Spider Queen's venom makes them completely under her control. Any survivors are made to show the soldiers where their base camp is, when the others go out and find the camps they are empty and bloodstained. They leave the base, to find the Spider Queen has been watching, they hear gunshots and find Shelly and Ray. The survivors bring them back to the base, and Shelly and Moreli begin to build a new portal.
The lookouts spot "soldiers" in the building and chase them. Dean and Ray stay behind to defend Shelly and Moreli. Dean gets impatient and goes off to help, leaving Ray alone. Dean, Crane and Elayna, meet up and go back for Moreli, but find Ray with a broken leg and alone. The three set out for the Queen's lair, while Ray stays behind to build traps. They find Moreli in the food chamber, but Shelly has been bitten. Shelly grabs Dean's gun and holds it to his head, telling them to go. The four race back to the base, while Shelly comes face to face with the Queen. Shelly tries to shoot her, but she is too far gone. She leads the Queen and her army to the base, and the "soldiers" kill everyone but Crane, who kills all of the army but Shelly and the Queen. Crane collapses, and Moreli leaves the makeshift lab to go out to him. Crane dies in his arms, and the Queen leaps down and kills Moreli.
Shelly enters the lab, turning off the power. Dean tries to get through to him, but fails and ends up killing him. Dean and Elayna work hurriedly on the portal, and they are just about to power it up when the Queen shows up. Dean grabs the last two wires to connect, and he connects them to the Queen. The current starts moving between the two, and the Queen gets electrocuted. The portal opens and Dean and Elayna jump through. The strain on the power system causes it to explode, taking the Queen with it.
Dean and Elayna wake up on a beach, and they share a kiss, just before a large flying animal attacks and presumably eats them, the two having apparently only made it to another alternate world and not home.

Tags: violence, alternate reality

Review:
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?
You bet and I hope they never stop making movies like this.
Webs wasn't made to take your attention away from big blockbuster movies.
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.
In looking for faults, Webs has too many cookie cutter characters where you can remember their traits far easier than their names.
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.
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 Looks Like an Episode of "Sliders", Only Worse and With Imbecile Dialogs.
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.
"Webs" is a watchable plagiarizing of "Sliders", only worse.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Spiders in a parallel universe doesn't necessarily make for a good movie....
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.
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 in overall, then "Webs" is rather below average for a horror movie of this particular type..
A group of characters are transported to a parallel dimension in which spiders rule the earth.
Honestly, this has the look and feel of Sliders and about the same budget.
If you like Sliders then watch this clone on SciFi channel when nothing else is on..
'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.
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.
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..
...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.
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 movie webs is a very good movie in my view.
a spider movie, 3.
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!.
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..
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.
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..
This film raises the question: If you could do it, should you?The premise of alternate universes was done wonderfully here.
This is one made for TV movie that I would cancel a night to the theatre to watch with no regrets.
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.
An obvious low budget movie though the cast has tried.SPOILER:4 electricians stumble upon a hidden nuclear generator while on a job.
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.
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?.
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.
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 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..
They unwittingly activate power to a portal that leads to a parallel world where everything looks identical to their world.
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..
A lot of fun with plenty of great points about it.
"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.
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.
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.
These also work to give the film a fantastic pace as well, which is a good bonus.
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 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.
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.
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.
Low budget sci-fi crap..
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 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?
A few fragile looking spider things against literally billions of humans?!
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?
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.
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.
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....
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?
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?