ITSY BITSY (2019)

I’m a sucker for a good giant monster movie and after seeing the trailer for ITSY BITSY (2019) I was instantly intrigued but sadly what I was given is not as interesting as I would have hoped.  Kara Spencer (Elizabeth Roberts), is a down on her luck nurse whose just uprooted her two children to move to a new town for a job taking care of Walter Clark (Bruce Davison), who is an eccentric collector of exotic items which includes a relic that houses a spider goddess.  When the relic is broken, the spider goddess is released and sets out to kill.

The visual and practical FX for the spider is great!  The problem is that the spider doesn’t really do much in the film as the film itself is more concerned with telling a good myth regarding the spider goddess and more concerned with family dysfunction of the main characters and their secrets.  This is all great background for characters but what you want in a giant monster movie is the scares, the fun, and the absurdity that comes with this genre of film.  Instead, the film is very much a drama until the action is kicked into high gear in the third act which for some may too late.

If you do stick with the film the third act is at least entertaining with the film never getting too boring it just won’t be what you are expecting.  Davison does an excellent job as the character responsible for all the background info about the spider goddess and the rest of the cast is equally good but the film-makers themselves may have just been trying too hard to make a film with actual real life characters with problems and conflicts.  These conflicts just don’t fit in a giant spider film.