#17 "Along Came a Spider"

Stats: 2001. Starring Morgan Freeman & Monica Potter. R.

Background: While I was intrigued by this movie when it was released, I didn’t watch it until several years later because my cousin “spoiled” the movie for me by letting it slip that Ashley Judd was the bad guy. When I finally watched the movie, I was genuinely surprised by the plot twists, as I kept expecting Ashley Judd to show up as the killer. She never did, since she’s not in the movie!

I found this in a suspense three-pack in Walmart’s $5 bin. It’s packaged with Kiss the Girls and Double Jeopardy. As Kiss the Girls is the first disk, the dvd’s are filed under “K” on my shelf … so I forgot about this movie until today, causing it to be out of order in the lineup.

Reactions: Maybe I should start reading James Patterson’s books, as I’ve enjoyed the film adaptations of Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. However, I do know that many times, film adaptations of books stray from the original plot (see The Time Traveler’s Wife and both of the recent Narnia films), and I usually prefer whichever version I encounter first! (The Time Traveler’s Wife is a notable exception here—I wouldn’t recommend the book, which I read first, but I greatly enjoyed the movie!)

This plot takes turns I didn’t expect. Watching the movie again, knowing how it would end, I still didn’t pick up on the clues. It’s quite entertaining, and I prefer it to Kiss the Girls because the subject matter isn’t as, for lack of a better word, icky. It’s a good suspense movie, (and the suspense really picks up in the last 20 minutes) yet it isn’t too scary.

Verdict: Keep