Film 27/52: Arachnophobia (1990)


I decided that the alphabetical order approach served us well in the first half of this series, so we'll keep that up for the next six months as well! Kicking things off is Frank Marshall's directorial debut, Arachnophobia. I'm a sucker for spider movies — the 70s was a golden era for nature run amok (favorites include Kingdom of the Spiders and Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo), and I hadn't seen this one in decades. I assumed Vonna and I had seen it together, but she had no recollection of it (and unlike me, she retains the tiniest of details once she's seen a film). 

Jeff Daniels moves his family to a small town in California to be the local doctor, only to be surprised when the old-timer he was planning to replace decides he's not ready to retire. Timed with their arrival is the body of a photographer who was bitten by a huge, extremely venomous spider in Venezuela, and unbeknownst to anyone, the spider traveled with him. It sets up shop in Daniel's barn, and after making out with a local spider, the town is soon overrun by thousands of venomous spiders. Did I mention that Daniels suffers from arachnophobia? A few mysterious deaths occur before spiders are suspect, and Daniels calls on expert Julian Sands and exterminator John Goodman (doing his best Bill Murray Caddyshack impression).  

As Joe Bob would say, that's a whole lot of plot getting in the way of the story. What makes the movie fun are the spiders, and Marshall sets up countless creepy moments and plenty of jump scares using both the real and Chris Walas' engineered spiders. Vonna jumped out of her chair a half a dozen times throughout the course of the film, which always makes movies more entertaining for me!

It's surprisingly dark — more people die than you might expect in an Amblin film. And while the spider-science is a bit tough to swallow, the film wastes no time putting eight-legged friends onscreen. And it's nice to see just how often real spiders were employed in the film, and that they're often used in-shot with the actors. 

In retrospect, I'm quite surprised they shot the opening scenes in Venezuela. Frank Marshall had experience shooting on Kauai for Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the helicopter flyovers are very similar to what Spielberg would shoot a few years later on Kauai for Jurassic Park. Frankly, the Jurassic Park shots are much more impressive than the similar scenes in Arachnophobia, but to be fair, they're also playing over a John Williams score.

I enjoyed revisiting Arachnophobia for this series, particularly once it was clear that this one had somehow slipped by Vonna. It's not the best spider-assault movie out there, but the 90s take holds up even better than I had expected. 


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