Arachnid (2001)

Wonderful Movie

Please don't spend money on this.

Lack of good storyline.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The giant monster genre is among the most hackneyed and clichéd of them all, and most of them can be copied and pasted together. In fact, look at giant bug movies. Spiders, Eight Legged Freaks, Mimic, Them, The Deadly Mantis, and Mosquito are all basically the same movie. The same cant be said for Arachnid, which has possibly the most generic of all of those movie titles I just listed. The movie is part King Kong, part Predator, part Mulholland Drive, part Funny Games, and part giant bug flick. It could've just been a monster on the loose movie, but instead the writer and directer aimed for something a bit different. Complete with surreal dream sequences, unknown character motives, aliens, demons, dinosaurs, protagonist arcs that come 360 and then go 180, and several other things to make it as different as possible, Arachnid is truly a bizarre experience; imagine Mosquito or Spiders directed by a French art-house director.The movie involves a group of people in search for a police ranger's lost brother, who went missing in a dogfight with an alien spacecraft. While arriving on the island, they come across strange cannabalistic natives who may or may not hate the invading white folk. Along the way they come across flesh-eating insects, self discoveries, premonitions, and giant spiders. In all serious, the film shouldn't be called "Arachnid" but more "The Island" because that's who the star of the film is. Sure, arachnids take the focus from most of the other things, but the film also has several other things that need focus. It'd be like calling Tremors "Guns" because, yes, there are guns in Tremors, but they aren't really the main focus. The island itself appears to be sentient and playing mind games with the characters, and it becomes apparent that the spiders may not even be real but a figment within the minds of the characters themselves. There's also a seen in the movie where the spiders literally eliminate 80% of the cast, and that's something only a very ballsy writer and director would follow through with.Arachnid is low budget and feels low budget. We always want to remake these big budgeted classic pieces of cinema, why not do something like this? Arachnid isn't well liked because most giant bug movies want only that; giant bugs. They don't want surrealism and they don't like to ask questions. They want their applesauce to be served to them with a spoon while a bib is dangling from their neck. If it comes to this or Spiders (a movie this is often compared to), just buy 10 copies of this.

Arachnid opens with a giant water spout on top of which would appear to be a UFO capable of becoming invisible. This attracts the attention of a stealth fighter pilot who ejects from his plane seconds before it crashes into the UFO. Having safely parachuted onto a jungle island, the pilot confronts and shoots an alien only to find himself facing a giant spider...We are transported both forward in time and geographically to Guam where locals from the aforementioned island are dying from spider bites. In order to find a cure an expedition is raised thus giving our film makers the opportunity to introduce the usual collection of clichéd characters and gradually eliminate most of them.Our motley crew are made up of Valentine (Chris Potter) the gung-ho gun-toting hero, his sidekicks Reyes (Luis Lorenzo Crespo) and Bear (Roqueford Allen), Mercer (Alex Reid) the tough as boots charter pilot also on a mission to find out what happened to her fighter pilot brother, Dr. Samuel Leon (Jose Sancho), his glamorous but tough assistant Susana (Neus Asensi), Henry Capri (Ravil Isyanov), arachnologist and a few of the islanders.Suffice to say that they soon find themselves arguing with each other and eventually, as their numbers dwindle, bonding. In between, various members of the party come to sticky ends involving body infesting giant ticks, cocoons and the title character.This formulaic dross is only enlivened in small parts by one or two special effects moments, the giant spider being the highlight - although even this is let down by the sight of it 'running'. Most of the cast seem to be more well-known on the small screen which is quite apt as the dialogue is certainly not up to the standards of a major motion picture. The music seems to have absolutely no connection to what is happening on the screen and simply jars. Background sounds of waves breaking and jungle noises are loud enough to drown out speech which itself is often totally unintelligible. The original involvement of alien creatures is never clearly explained - unfortunately merely a prelude to various plot holes. To top all this off, we have yet another film without a proper ending. Whether this is done in the expectation of a sequel or simply because the budgetary pot ran dry is a matter of conjecture.Whilst most of this can be explained away as being caused by budgetary restraints - apparently only $570,000 dollars was wasted - blame must largely lie with screenplay writer Mark Seri and director Jack Sholder.

A plane driven by a pilot(Alex Reid) and transporting ex-marines(Chris Potter, Luis Lorenzo), a scientist(Ravil Isyanov) and doctors(Jose Sancho, Neus Asensi) crashes on a tropical island that contains a lethal carnivorous alien spider. The mission of the medics to find a formula to heal ills and the pilot to look for her brother disappeared when his jet was downed. They're accidentally lost and the eight-legged spider causes wreak havoc terrorizing and destroying the crew . Lethal alien spider meets up local natives and crew and spontaneously catch them and begins to consume people. The spider rapidly multiplies and the protagonists confronting with it .This chiller with middling budget packs thrills, chills, some good action and few funny moments. It's a hybrid of monster movies from the 50s such as 'Tarantula' and modern American production such as 'Depredator'. The thrilling screenplay is a bit yawn-inspiring but nifty special effects will keep you from dozing off, its author is Steve Johnson, he's a nice creature effects designer, a perfect craftsman who made effects in 'Spiderman II' , 'Species II' , ' Blade II' , and ' War of worlds ' , among others. On the whole this is a suspenseful and tense thriller especially at the amazing ending tableau when Chris Potter and Alex Reid have to tackle the gigantic spider at the lair in the final. The tale is well produced by Brian Yuzna and Julio Fernandez, owners of Fantastic Factory productions, a successful terror movies company. The motion picture is professionally directed by Jack Sholder with rather too much camera movement and there are also lots of low-angle shots of people hanging around waiting to get bitten by the carnivorous spider. Although nothing which haven't been seen before, this is not the picture to watch if you are scared of spiders , however the movie is quite entertaining. Utterly arachnophobia people must flee this film.Other movies about those bugs are the following : ¨Tarantula(1955)¨ by Jack Arnold with John Agar; ¨Tarantula: the deadly cargo(1977)¨ with Claude Akins; ¨Kingdom of spiders(77)¨ by John Budd Cardos with William Shatner and ¨Arachnophobia(1990)¨ by Frank Marshall with John Goodman.

This movie is so horrible that I now suffer from "Movie Arachnophobia" (fear of watching anymore movies about spiders). The beginning alone had me scratching my head wondering what was going through the writers/directors minds when they came up with the idea of how to start this film. It is downright pitiful and was almost enough for me to turn it off right then and there only a couple of minutes into it. ...and now in hindsight, I should have shut it off and not wasted the 90 minutes or so of my life viewing this absolutely awful film. I mean, there is worse out there, but this movie is still not even worth watching. If you must see this film, DO NOT spend the money to rent it...rather, wait for it to come on Sci-Fi sometime. One of the worst spider movies ever!!!