Ah, the smell of burnt celluloid in the morning! Vincent Volcano here, with a critique that’s hotter than the flames in Beelzebub’s barbecue pit. Let’s swing into “A Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story” – another visual web supposedly spun to dazzle and ensnare. This time, it’s a dance of arachnid anxiety as young Miles Morales faces his teen angst and superhero growing pains in a condensed 7 minutes and 14 seconds of existential dread.
Let’s cut to the chase, or rather the lack of one, as this short film has about as much action as a sloth on tranquilizers. But fear not, my dear masochists of the macabre, director Jarelle Dampier has decided that subtlety is for the weak, and instead peppers the piece with horror elements as nuanced as a sledgehammer to the kneecap. The sound design is a cacophony of string-plucking madness – imagine Vivaldi conducted by a spider with each leg in a different socket – it’s an attempt to squeeze your guts like a tube of toothpaste from the Dollar Inferno Store.
Shameik Moore, bless his soul, returns to lend his pipes to Miles and does what he can with a script that’s thinner than the plot of a B-movie slasher flick. Our hero grunts, gasps, and groans with the best of them, embodying teenage turmoil with the panache of someone who’s just stepped on a LEGO brick – in the dark – barefoot. The real horror, dear readers, is the missed opportunity to delve deep into a hero’s psyche without resorting to the overused trope of ‘teen angst meets creepy crawlies.’
The real scare comes when you realize that this is what passes for character development these days. The plot, thinner than Cerberus’ patience on a hot day, is about Miles grappling with his superhero identity, all while juggling homework and puberty. Groundbreaking? Hardly. It’s as if the writers dug up the cliff notes to every superhero’s diary and said, “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”
But let’s not tarantula everything with the same brush. The visual representation of anxiety, while heavy-handed, at least attempts to convey a message that’s as relevant as it is significant – mental health matters, even for those who wear spandex and swing from skyscrapers. It’s a webbed hand reaching out to the audience, saying, “Hey, even heroes need to chat about their feelings.”
And therein lies the short’s redeeming cocoon. It’s a fluttering cape in the wind of change that perhaps will allow future storytellers to weave more complex narratives about the heroes we idolize. It’s a starting block, not the finish line. For that sincerity, the film avoids being entirely incinerated by my hellfire gaze.
In conclusion, “A Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story” crawls across the finish line with just enough introspective meat to chew on, but still leaves you feeling like you’ve been served an appetizer in place of a full meal. It’s short and not-so-sweet, a morsel of Miles Morales that will either leave you hungry for more or searching for a can of cinematic bug spray.
As for the Kevin Love Fund’s noble attempt to incorporate mental health into the curriculum, let’s hope the students learn more from the lessons than they do from this fleeting flick.
I give it a scorching 3 out of 10 on the Volcano Scale – not the eruption I was hoping for, but at least it’s a spark in the dark abyss of formulaic franchise fodder. Flames fade, but classics burn forever, and this, my fellow denizens of the dark, is but a flicker.
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Ah, Vincent Volcano, your critique is as fiery as your namesake! “A Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story” sounds like a tangled web of missed opportunities. It seems Miles Morales is caught in a web of teenage turmoil thinner than dental floss! Thank you for the cinematic roasting, I felt the burn from here. Maybe next time the movie will have more legs to stand on – or eight, in this case. Keep the critiques scorching hot, Vincent, just make sure not to get roasted yourself next time!