'Paper Spiders' Review: A Nightmarish Portrayal of Mental Illness Complicates This Well-Acted Coming-of-Ager 'Paper Spiders' Review: A Nightmarish Portrayal of Mental Illness Complicates This Well-Acted Coming-of-Ager Excellent performances by Lili Taylor and Stefania LaVie Owen ground this compassionate, slightly over-burdened tale of a mother and daughter riven by delusional disorder. Guy Lodge, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail Director: Inon Shampanier With: Lili Taylor, Stefania LaVie Owen, Ian Nelson, Peyton List, Max Casella, David Rasche, Michael Cyril Creighton, Tom Papa. Running time: Running time: 110 MIN. Entertainment Squad “Paper Spiders” opens on a dynamic played out in countless American coming-of-age stories, as bright-eyed high school senior Melanie (Stefania LaVie Owen) and her doting single mother Dawn (Lili Taylor) tour the USC college campus on which the former has her heart set. As Melanie gawps in wonder, Dawn surveys the place with a critical eye, asking neurotic, embarrassing mom questions about campus security and the like: California is, after all, practically a whole country away from their Erie Canal, and she’s not quite ready for her only child to fly that far from the nest. What parent can’t relate? Yet as Inon Shampanier’s heartfelt, honestly acted domestic drama unfolds, this needy mother-daughter bond turns less familiar and more frightening. It’s not the teen’s lack of protection anyone need fear once left to her own devices, but that of her increasingly irrational parent.