I can’t find any major faults with Arachnophobia other than it wasn’t that scary for me.
A photographer named Manley (Mark L. Taylor) joins up with an expedition led by Dr. Atherton (Julian Sands.) Atherton is exploring a 2000 foot sinkhole in Venezuela that has allowed animals to evolve without interference from the outside world. As such, there are new species of animals that have never been encountered by man. One of these is a type of spider with venom much more powerful than any currently known species.
Manley is bitten by one of the spiders and immediately dies. The expedition team packs up his body for transport home to America and one of the spiders hitches a ride inside his coffin. When it arrives in the United States, it mates with a domestic spider and creates rapidly reproducing offspring of this venomous species.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels) has relocated with his family from San Francisco to a small town to set up a new practice. Jennings’ arrival coincides with a rash of odd deaths. It turns out that their small town happens to be where Manley’s body was transported. The Venezuelan spider’s offspring threaten to overrun the town.
Arachnophobia, the 1990 comedy/horror film directed by Frank Marshall, attempts to capitalize on people’s fear of spiders. (Just in case you weren’t aware, “arachnophobia” is the term for a fear of spiders.) So there are plenty of scenes of spiders crawling on people’s faces, hands, arms, or legs. There’s even a shot of a spider crawling between a woman’s breasts for good measure. If that sounds like it would bother you, this is not the movie you want to be watching at home alone.
Director Frank Marshall has long been associated with Steven Spielberg (who co-produced). It’s obvious that Marshall either picked-up an extreme Spielberg influence or that Spielberg himself had some input on the film. From the camera angles, dialogue interplay, and even the music cues, Arachnophobia has Spielbergian fingerprints all over it. That’s not a bad thing or even a knock against Marshall. I just think this film is more lightweight than it would have been had it come from another production company.
The movie differs from the giant monster insect films of the 1950s and the nature-on-a-rampage films of the 1970s. These spiders aren’t huge, radioactive, or mutated and they’re not rebelling against mankind for poisoning the environment. They’re just spiders doing spider things, albeit extremely exaggerated (and, in some cases, entirely fictional) spider things. And there’s a hefty dose of dark humor that was usually missing from those earlier movies.
Jeff Daniels leads a well-chosen cast that includes Harley Jane Kozak as his wife, Molly, and John Goodman as an exterminator. Goodman channels a bit of Bill Murray’s Carl Spackler character from Caddyshack for his role.
I can’t find any major faults with Arachnophobia other than it wasn’t that scary for me. The jump scares were telegraphed most of the time and spiders simply being spiders isn’t frightening. If you find spiders heart-stopping on their own accord, add two points to my score. For those looking for a film that never relies on gore or occult themes to get a scare out of an audience, Arachnophobia might be a good choice. Otherwise, this an entertaining, if not very scary, movie.
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
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