What I Watched - "Sick Girl"
Anybody who knows me knows that my biggest fear is spiders and bugs, immediately after sea monsters and house plants, so Sick Girl definitely got me where the director, Lucky McKee, hoped for. In the story a geeky, lesbian entomologist played by the oddly angular Angela Bettis receives an unidentified species of bug in the mail from a mystery sender. Shortly after this she strikes up a relationship with an equally geeky artist, played by the ubiquitous Misty Mundae of horror movie and "here's my vagina!" fame, only to have their love nest terrorized by the six-legged visitor. McKee, and I hope his name really is Lucky, takes direct inspiration from early Cronenberg work with scenes of slimy, puppeted spiders feeding on human hosts and close-ups of the subsequent pulsating, oozing sores. The acting in this episode of the popular Masters of Horror series is what one would expect from an anthology series. Bettis adopts a geeky, baritone for her character which comes and goes and makes no sense. Her paramour is less annoying but devolves into standard psychotic acting about half-way through. The male confidant of the main character is a one-dimensional pussy-hound whose shining scene is when he is lying in bed with his hand down his boxers. The special effects are effective, enough to make me close my eyes on more than one occasion, but quite obviously low budget. Not the greatest episode of the Masters of Horror series, which are nearly all available on Netflix instant, but worth a watch if bugs, especially those which get in your ear and lay eggs, are the third most terrifying thing in the world.
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