Look, if there’s anyone who would be intrigued by two broke punk rock lesbians who befriend drag queens and fight serial killers and own pet spiders, it’s yours truly, a broke punk rock lesbian who befriends drag queens and wants to fight serial killers. (Ixnay on the spiders, though). Believe me when I tell you that I really wanted to like Spidarlings.

Not trying to put myself on a pedestal here, but I’ll speak a bit from experience. I am part of a punk rock band. The feeling of performing and releasing raw energy is empowering, exciting, and unlike any other kind of musical expression. Maybe my stimulus bar is set too high and I’m generally disaffected by everything now, but when I’m presented with a film like this, I expect at least somewhat of that kind of adrenaline rush that can only come out of that pretty cool thing called punk rock. But overall, it was about as exciting as standing still at a Radiohead concert.

Spidarlings follows two poverty-stricken lovers: Eden (Sophia Disgrace) and Matilda (Rahel Kapsaski), who are two years behind on paying their rent and can barely make it through the day. (Squatting is punk AF, yo.) They become desperate for a solution to their financial woes and to escape the seedy nightclub that Matilda works at, especially after a serial killer starts murdering the other working girls in the club. But when Eden buys a powerful tarantula named Rainer, things REALLY take a strange turn.

At its core, it’s an absurdist, anarchistic, horror comedy shitshow in a somewhat positive way. But the storytelling unfortunately lacks the intelligence and panache of their well-executed camp film counterparts, even ones that intended the same end product. I praise the creativity and originality, but it lacks the speed and quick wit that help horror comedies succeed, and as a result ends up clocking in at 2 hours and 5 minutes. The spider part is literally only a fraction of the entirety of the film’s drawn-out, poorly paced vignettes, as if it were thrown in at the last minute because the filmmaker felt that the story’s premise wasn’t strong enough. I’m not sure that helped, but it somehow made its way into the unimaginative title.

For a film to attain cult status, it must happen organically. Spidarlings gleefully pays homage to all things kitsch, gorey, ugly, and campy, and clearly takes inspiration from cult classics throughout the decades, from Rocky Horror all the way to Tank Girl. But it somehow only measures up to be a try-hard attempt to become a cult film on its own, which basically ensures it never will be.

The over-stylization is appropriate to the film’s subject matter. While I appreciate the aesthetic that director and writer Salem Kapsaski was aiming for, there’s a difference between making a bright film with popping colors and simply using bad (to no) lighting with oversaturated filters and colors akin to a bad Instagram photo. Even by underground no-budget indie film status, the quality of the lighting and coloring is inexcusable.

Sigh.

I wouldn’t necessarily use the term “all style no substance,” for this, but it’s disappointing to see such a cool and intriguing punk rock aesthetic of a film–which opens with seizure-inducing opening credits–executed so poorly.

It’s rare to see a film with punk protagonists: the leading ladies did the best they could with a mediocre script, and the fashion we see is always cool and different to look at when all else fails. Even though the whole product is clunky and comes off as a bit “#edgy,” it’s important to recognize that its macabre heart is in the right place, with a safety pin pierced right in the middle. But if you’re a cinematographer, stay far away or otherwise you’ll shove your head in the oven.