WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
I know I’ve referenced spiders in horror films previously when writing the Creepy Crawlies article – but there’s enough films that include them that it seemed to be worth writing them an article of their own. Not that I am in anyway comfortable with watching these films as I have a fear of spiders myself. I know that Arachnophobia could also include scorpions but I kind of forgot about that until the article was complete…
Tarantula
Will scientists ever learn? Bad stuff happens when you mess with animal DNA – especially the dangerous ones! It’s a disaster waiting to happen. I’ll be honest, just the normal sized tarantula made me a little uncomfortable, but then as I mentioned I do have mild arachnophobia anyway so the giant one made my skin do more than crawl. Now, I’m not saying this film is perfect but there’s a rattling sound whenever the tarantula is focused on that is simply unnerving! Things don’t look perfect in this film either – like the fact that there are times you can still see the tarantula’s leg when technically you shouldn’t.
Lavantula
So, you know I talked about things looking bad in Tarantula? At least that was made in 1955 – this film has no excuse having been made in 2015! This belongs in the same film-hell as Sharknado because it’s not too far off the same kind of story just tarantulas from a volcano instead of sharks in a tornado (in case anyone hadn’t worked it out, that’s why it’s called Sharknado). To compound it, they even run in to the lead actor from Sharknado! Can it get any worse?
Arachnophobia
Truthfully, I couldn’t write an article based around films about spiders without covering the film that is literally named after the phobia. What’s great about this film is quite how simple it is. There’s no science to mess with the spiders to make them more dangerous than they already are, like in Tarantula or whatever nonsense is going on in Lavantula, these are just extremely dangerous spiders! Even the film itself is beautifully sedate, because no one believes that the deaths are being caused by spiders so they go about their daily business without panic
Ice Spiders
I’ll say this much, for a pretty weak film (not to the extent of Lavantula but it’s not a lot better) this had quite an intense start. It might just be my personal fear but the shot of the second hunter getting attacked and the way they filmed it makes it look like the spider is going to land on you, the viewer, just made me extremely uncomfortable. Quite a bit of this film is actually shot from the spider’s perspective – similar to Arachnophobia in that aspect – almost like the spiders are deliberately targeting the humans. My only bug bear for this is that they have a female black widow, or at least it’s dominant DNA is black widow, but there’s no hourglass marking – so how do they know it’s a black widow?
In the Spider’s Web
I want to know how the people in this film weren’t automatically suspicious of the villagers! They’re walking around with spiders tattooed on their heads…isn’t that a red flag that this place may not be safe? On top of that, I’m sure I’d leg it as soon as I saw a man with spider silk on his head and I’m almost certain that Gina is given a necklace of spider eggs! Truthfully I probably would’ve run a mile as soon as I saw the massive webs at the beginning, then again, I guess we wouldn’t have a film if the characters reacted like normal human beings. In all honesty, the spiders aren’t technically the bad guys here even though it does look like they eat Stacey alive! Ahh, the sound they use for that scene makes my skin crawl. Instead, it’s just humans using spiders for their nefarious deeds.
Eight Legged Freaks
I’ll say this much for this film, I remember it being a really cheesy piece of crap when I first saw it. However, it’s actually better than I remembered. OK, yes there’s still a few things that are hard to take seriously – like the spider and cat in the dry wall. Instead of being creepy, it’s just comical and reminds me of the bonus scene on the first Scooby Doo film, that and it’s like they can’t decide what spiders are supposed to sound like. For example, when Mike goes to visit Joshua’s spider farm at the beginning of the film – I thought he heard a monkey as well. The other thing is, even the CGI isn’t as bad as I remembered. For me, it’s like the film is trying to be an updated version of Tarantula but instead of one spider they decided to thrown in as many as they could to terrorize this small town.
