Review – Spider

The promo blurb for this movie proudly proclaims that it was directed by “goremeister” David Cronenberg. However, by the looks of things at this point in his career perhaps the appellation “boremeister” might fit a little better. Ralph Fiennes plays a poor crazy man released too early from a mental institution. He struggles to piece together his traumatic childhood, a string of events surrounding the death of his mother that play as pure, unadulterated Freud. Miranda Richardson plays the whore/Madonna characters that haunt our protagonist in a series of flashbacks that follow a fairly predictable course. I’m happy to see Cronenberg working again, and I’m glad he decided to branch out away from the splatter-intensive stuff of his younger days. Unfortunately the direction he appears to have chosen has left most of his interesting visuals and grasp of deranged characters behind and focused instead on his art-film conceits. It’s just not enough to keep a movie going for an hour and a half. See if desperate