WEEK 3: CREEPY CRAWLY CRITTERS
Arachnophobia (1990) Review
I'm starting off an unofficial trilogy of reviews for spider-related films with the Steven Spielberg-produced thriller Arachnophobia: one of the most well-known movies to feature killer spiders. Even
though he didn’t direct it, this movie has the triple threat that many of
Spielberg’s best films have: a combination of adventure, thrills, and fun.
Unlike the majority of killer animal films, there are
actually some big name actors featured here, including John Goodman as an
eccentric exterminator, and Jeff Daniels
as the main character, who’s an arachnophobic doctor and family man, having
just moved to a small town in hopes of taking on the patients of an aging
doctor thinking of retiring. Before the movie gets to him, it starts out with
an old-school adventure feel, following a team of scientists on an expedition
to a remote area of South America, where they find ancient, aggressive spiders.
One guy on the expedition is killed by a spider, and his body is shipped back
to the small town Jeff Daniels’ character just moved to, with the spider
stowing away in the coffin. What starts out as an adventure film soon turns
into a suburban thriller, as the spider breeds with a run-of-the-mill species,
and spawns a new type that’s small, but deadly, and numerous. The townspeople
start falling victim to the new threat, and the doctor must try to figure out
how to stop them.
Unlike typical movies of this sub-genre, Arachnophobia takes the time to build up
the characters and tease the killer spiders, but while that’s commendable, it’s
also a problem. The pace is very slow, which is acceptable to a
point, but as a viewer, you know what’s causing the deaths in the small town,
so you’re basically waiting for the characters in the movie to figure it out
and take action. Everyone takes way too long to figure out the spiders are
killing people, and it makes the first two acts more tedious than necessary.
For example, in Jaws, people figure
out pretty quickly that a shark is responsible for all the deaths occurring,
and they take action by the end of act one. Arachnophobia
doesn’t rely on dramatic set pieces and action—it’s much smaller in scale than
that—but if someone, anyone, in the
movie could have discovered who the culprit was sooner, it would have made the
events in the second act more exciting to watch.
The spiders are mostly all real spiders—Australian huntsman
spiders, to be exact—but some animatronics were used, and they blend in pretty
well. There are a good number of frights
in this movie, and not an over-reliance on jump scares or false scares. Spiders
that are crawling around people who are unaware does start to wear thin after a
while, but the ending switches things up and makes for an awesome, over-the-top
finale. As someone who watches killer animal films mainly to see the killer
animal do its thing, I really love the way this movie ends, but I can see
someone not as familiar with the genre who is invested in the earlier parts of
the film being turned off by the way it ends, because it contrasts quite a bit
with the more grounded, believable events that occur earlier on. As a whole,
this movie is not trying to be something like Lavalantula, where it’s just a ridiculous fun time. It’s trying to
be fun, but at the same time, believable, and the ending, while hardly believable,
is still fun, and actually quite exciting, especially compared with the plodding
second act.
Despite the slow pace, Arachnophobia
is more sophisticated than the majority of movies to feature attacking insects
and arachnids. While it may be of a higher caliber than most killer animal
movies, it’s still not in the league of Jaws.
Perhaps if Spielberg had directed as well as executive-produced, it might have
been able to reach a similar level.
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