Arachnid starts in Guam where a man from a nearby island has been taken seriously ill, he is covered in strange bite marks & eventually dies. Concerned about his death Dr. Samuel Leon (José Sancho) organises an expedition to the man's native island to try & discover the cause of his illness & death, American soldier Valentine (Chris Potter) is called in to lead the team while local pilot Lauren Mercer (Alex Reid) is hired to fly the team to the island. Approaching the island & the small plane loses power & Mercer barely manages to land it, the team are now stuck on the island with the plane out of action & decide to carry on with their research since they are there anyway. The team soon learn that a giant flesh eating alien mutated Spider is loose in the jungle & is trying to breed, the team must must stop it before the Spider or it's offspring reach the mainland & infect the entire Earth...
This Spanish production was directed by Jack Sholder & is a fairly lacklustre 'Creature Feature' that has little to recommend it, Arachnid is the sort of low budget tripe that turns up on the Sy Fy Channel all the time. Spiders eh? Almost everyone hates them & more importantly are scared of them so the usually humble Spider is a good subject for a typical giant insect 'Creature Feature' since people don't like them to begin with. The cinematic wasteland is littered with giant/killer Spider films, from the big budget Arachnophobia (1990) to Arachnia (2003) & from the classic Tarantula (1955) to the not so classic but still fun Spiders (2000) & it's sequel Spiders II: Breeding Ground (2001) & the more recent big budget horror comedy Eight Legged Freaks (2002) which I personally really like with countless other obscure Spider inspired horror flicks between like Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) & Ice Spiders (2007) to name but two. Here with Arachnid the script offers nothing particularly new, memorable or stimulating as a giant alien mutated Spider threatens to destroy mankind & the efforts of the clichéd cast of character's to stop it. Arachnid is pretty poor for the majority of it's duration, at almost 90 odd minutes it feels longer although to be fair the pace isn't too bad but the premise is totally wasted with a lack of gore or action & some incredibly badly shot & edited sequences that were meant to be either scary or exciting but just end up annoying. The forgettable script feels like a mix of Predator (1987) & Arachnophobia as a bunch of paper thin character's are bumped of by mutant alien Spiders in a dense South American jungle, unfortunately it sounds a lot better than it actually is. Predictable with a loose plot that never ties things together that well I would find it hard to recommend Arachnid to anyone other than die hard creature feature fans.
Arachnid isn't much to look at either, the jungle location is wasted with flat & boring photography that doesn't even try to take advantage of the naturally lush locations. The various special effects scenes are poorly shot & edited which sometimes makes it difficult to follow what's going on, there's no sense of scale & it's difficult to know where people or things are in relation to each other. It's far too dark too often, there's a lack of gore with only some blood coughing offering up some of the red stuff. There's a cool dream sequence in which a character's face distorts & splits open as the alien Spider's head bursts through but it's just a dream & a little pointless. The special effects are alright, there's no great usage of CGI computer effects & the alien Spider is mainly a real life sized rather stiff moving puppet but the makers are just ignoring one bad special effect & using another equally bad special effect in instead.
With a supposed budget of about $570,000 this was really low budget & it show's with small scale effects & little in the way of ambition or imagination. Filmed in Barcelona in Spain & in Mexico. The acting isn't anything to shout about, minor British celebrity Alex Reid is terrible.
Arachnid is a pretty poor creature feature, how can a film about giant mutated alien Spiders be bad? Arachnid is how. This could have been quite a fun little film, as it is Arachnid is forgettable Sy Fy Channel fare that has little going for it.
This Spanish production was directed by Jack Sholder & is a fairly lacklustre 'Creature Feature' that has little to recommend it, Arachnid is the sort of low budget tripe that turns up on the Sy Fy Channel all the time. Spiders eh? Almost everyone hates them & more importantly are scared of them so the usually humble Spider is a good subject for a typical giant insect 'Creature Feature' since people don't like them to begin with. The cinematic wasteland is littered with giant/killer Spider films, from the big budget Arachnophobia (1990) to Arachnia (2003) & from the classic Tarantula (1955) to the not so classic but still fun Spiders (2000) & it's sequel Spiders II: Breeding Ground (2001) & the more recent big budget horror comedy Eight Legged Freaks (2002) which I personally really like with countless other obscure Spider inspired horror flicks between like Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) & Ice Spiders (2007) to name but two. Here with Arachnid the script offers nothing particularly new, memorable or stimulating as a giant alien mutated Spider threatens to destroy mankind & the efforts of the clichéd cast of character's to stop it. Arachnid is pretty poor for the majority of it's duration, at almost 90 odd minutes it feels longer although to be fair the pace isn't too bad but the premise is totally wasted with a lack of gore or action & some incredibly badly shot & edited sequences that were meant to be either scary or exciting but just end up annoying. The forgettable script feels like a mix of Predator (1987) & Arachnophobia as a bunch of paper thin character's are bumped of by mutant alien Spiders in a dense South American jungle, unfortunately it sounds a lot better than it actually is. Predictable with a loose plot that never ties things together that well I would find it hard to recommend Arachnid to anyone other than die hard creature feature fans.
Arachnid isn't much to look at either, the jungle location is wasted with flat & boring photography that doesn't even try to take advantage of the naturally lush locations. The various special effects scenes are poorly shot & edited which sometimes makes it difficult to follow what's going on, there's no sense of scale & it's difficult to know where people or things are in relation to each other. It's far too dark too often, there's a lack of gore with only some blood coughing offering up some of the red stuff. There's a cool dream sequence in which a character's face distorts & splits open as the alien Spider's head bursts through but it's just a dream & a little pointless. The special effects are alright, there's no great usage of CGI computer effects & the alien Spider is mainly a real life sized rather stiff moving puppet but the makers are just ignoring one bad special effect & using another equally bad special effect in instead.
With a supposed budget of about $570,000 this was really low budget & it show's with small scale effects & little in the way of ambition or imagination. Filmed in Barcelona in Spain & in Mexico. The acting isn't anything to shout about, minor British celebrity Alex Reid is terrible.
Arachnid is a pretty poor creature feature, how can a film about giant mutated alien Spiders be bad? Arachnid is how. This could have been quite a fun little film, as it is Arachnid is forgettable Sy Fy Channel fare that has little going for it.