Arachnid (2001)

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.

I enjoyed DNA (1997) a lot more than this! Let's face it: we have Eight legged freaks, Arachnophobia and even Ice Spiders, so we've seen good fun, good movies and cheesy fun also, but this one is beyond bad and terrible. Sorry to say, I did expect to enjoy it yet I couldn't wait for it to end. Arachnid is one bad executed movie, with some OK actors, good settings, bad dialogue and horrible effects. The spider from IT looked better than what I've seen here. Not recommended to anyone, not even monsters fan!Cheers!

"Arachnid" may not be a great film and in fact it starts off pretty rocky but it gets better as it progresses and what it does right makes it worth a viewing. The story follows a rescue group traveling to a remote island where the inhabitants have been dying mysteriously. Once on the island, the crew discover that it is populated by strange creatures which appear to be hybrids between spiders and other native forms of life. The creatures are not spiders at all though, the whole incident has been caused by an alien ship crashing onto the island. The accident has released a rapidly evolving strain of spider-like aliens and they are quickly picking off the human population. Before they know it, this rescue mission has become a fight for survival.When I say the movie starts off rough, I mean really rough. Most of the effects used to create the creatures are practical, which is a very good thing but at the beginning, we see the alien ship and it is created used some computer effects that are not good at all. It's unfortunate because not only does the scene where the ship crashes look amateurish but it doesn't add anything to the story. There's no real mystery about what is happening on the island, you know right from the beginning that it's alien spiders. There's a minor sub plot where the crew's pilot Mercer (Alex Reid) is looking for her brother, which we know is the pilot that first encounters the arachnid creatures but it's more of a tossup between "is he dead or mutated into a horrible spider monster" than anything. Either way you know she's not going to see her brother again. The beginning of the movie is also plagued with terrible dialog and some wooden acting. Once again, if you get past the first 30 minutes or so, it mostly goes away. Maybe I just got used to it, but either way I didn't notice it so much and the movie does get significantly better over time.The biggest strength of the movie is the variety of creatures and the special effects. Because the arachnid alien creature is trying to adapt to the environment, it's got a variety of spawns that are pretty cool to see. There are some oversized spiders, some snake-spider hybrids, creepy tick-like creatures that burrow under your skin and let's not forget the boss monster itself. These creatures are all created using stop motion, elaborate puppets or cleverly shot miniatures and they're all pretty impressive and very cool to see. You'll likely be disappointed that there isn't a sequel where we get to see additional creatures actually. That's not to say that the special effects are perfect. The budget does show, particularly during the beginning and during scenes where we can see the main arachnid alien crawling around on walls and such. It looks just fine but the speed at which its limbs move isn't quite right. If you ever look at insects move, they have a really unsettling jittery way of moving their limbs. It almost looks like your eye is too slow to capture the movements and all you see are random snippets (kind of like watching people move to a strobe light) and the movements of the main spider just doesn't look as good as it would have if these movements had been done using modern special effects.Another positive are the characters in the movie. Well, I should say select characters. Several members of the crew sent on the island consist of natives that don't speak English and are basically given no dialog or characterization whatsoever. You can bet these guys are just spider food. The main characters though, they're competent when it comes to the situations they're stuck in and interesting enough that you do want to see them make it out alive. It makes a big difference in the scary moments.I also want to discuss one bit in the movie that was really clever. So you know how in every horror movie, the group has to split up so they can cover more ground/get eaten when they become isolated? Well this movie does that but instead of the second group just getting killed off, they actually re-join the survivors of the spider attacks towards the end of the film. That means you get that tension of the group getting smaller and smaller as the bodies pile up, only to get a boost of potential victims towards the end. If you are an aspiring film-maker I strongly recommend you check this movie out to see the little touches it did well.For all the praise I'm giving the movie, I have to admit it really isn't that great overall. It feels like the film needed to go through one more proof read to tighten up some of the loose ends and move this from a "better than expected" movie to a "hidden gem". It isn't great but if you see this one at the video store for a dollar or you spot an ol' VHS copy at a garage sale, it's worth a look. Just forgive that terrible intro and you're in for some fun. (Theatrical version on DVD, October 25, 2013)

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.