When an academic working for the Intextus project - some sort of global historic research endeavour - stops reporting in, the people at headquarters send Alan (Roland Wybenga), an American professor, to Budapest to figure out what's wrong.
Plenty is wrong, as it turns out; Alan's contact is dead soon after their first meeting, people he's met turn out not to exist at all, and everyone in his hotel keeps shooting him knowing looks.
With the help of the sexy assistant to the late academic (Paola Rinaldi), Alan starts working out what the hell is going on, while someone goes around murdering people who try to help him. The explanation for the mystery is a little underwhelming, but it makes good use of Lovecraftian tropes, and is capped by a truly batshit finale that does a lot to elevate the film.
Not that what goes on before is bad; The Spider Labyrinth is heavy on atmosphere, paranoia, and some light surrealistic horror touches. It's just a little slow, and it sometimes looks a little too mundane despite cinematographer Nino Celeste bathing the more Giallo-esque scenes in garish colours and even pulling out some dutch angles. Director Gianfranco Giagni, meawhile, had mostly worked on TV before making this film, and it unfortunately shows.
The film is also hurt by a very, very boring main character whose main traits are his immaculately coiffed hair and an inability to emote anything beyond looking slightly miffed even when he's knee-deep in corpses; The Femme Fatale is fatale enough, but she sadly doesn't add much beyond looks either. Most of the colour comes from secondary characters like a creepy, cat-loving hotel owner (Stéphane Audran) or the typical doomed, crazy-seeming bystander (William Berger) who actually knows what's going on and tries to warn the protagonist that he's fucked.
I liked it a fair bit; It's a fun, flawed, old-fashioned film and a good tale of Lovecraft-style elder god cults. Best approached without high expectations.
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