Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
slayrrr666
"Arachnia" isn't that bad of a cheesy creature feature.**SPOILERS**Traveling to Arizona to examine a new fossil recently unearthed, pilot Sean Pachowski, (Rob Monkiewicz) with Professor Mugford, (David Bruce) and his assistants Chandra Weaver, (Irene Joseph) Trina, (Bevin McGraw) Kelly, (Alexxus Young) and Deke, (Dan Merriman) witness a meteor shower flying close-by, and a crashing one forces their plane down. Regrouping and attempting to find shelter, they come across an abandoned house in the middle of the desert. The owner of the house, Moses Cobb, (James Aspden) thinks them trespassers until they prove otherwise, and returning to his house, he shows them a gigantic spider that he claims was once alive. When giant spiders show up and attack the farm, they devise a plan to help survive against the ever-increasing number of spiders.The Good News: There is a lot of good here, most of it the campy nature of the film. Few films today are willing to pay homage to the creature features of the early 50s, opting instead to concentrate on the 70s films and leave the earlier ones alone . It's refreshing when one comes along to have the spirit of those films quite competently. From the easily explained and rendered plot to the blatant borrowing of other films to carry it's storyline, the exploitative elements of nudity and violence as well as the well-timed comic relief, this just screams giant camp-fest. The brief moments of greatness do come across as being quite nice. One of the best is the moment where a character runs from the crashed plane and nose dives at the point where the cliché would have the thing explode, only for nothing to happen. A quite inspired moment that left a well-deserved chuckle afterwards. The bathtub scene, and in general anything with the two women were nice to watch, even though one of them was a total cop-out. The ending is the real highlight, where the film shifts gears and becomes the all-out camp classic that it was destined to be but wasn't, with loads of action, a couple of witty moments, and some nice moments strung together. It's the real highlight of the film.The Bad News: As much as their was to like in the movie, there was also a couple of things hurting it. First off, the pacing is a big mess. The opening gets things off to a flying start, but then it seriously drags things out until the very end, only sporadically showing signs of life. That means the middle section will really test the most discriminating viewer's patience, even before they're rewarded with a grand conclusion. The spiders come into the movie much too late, and their low kill total does them no favors. Speaking about the spiders, they are so cheesily rendered and depicted that hardly anyone would be scared of these creatures. They are just beyond looking bad and instead are laughable. It's hard to believe what would be more realistic in this situation: cheap CGI or what was presented here. They were that bad. They invoke the tone they wanted quite admirably, but come nowhere close to being believable.The Final Verdict: While not the best giant spider flick, there's some others that aren't as good. Some pacing issues aside, this could've been a great little find. It has the potential, the ingredients, and the sense of fun, but it doesn't quite make it there. Only for those hardcore fans of the genre or those in desperate need of a new flick for their annual Friday Night MST party with friends.Rated R: Violence, Nudity and Language
dj_oldfield-2
This is one of those movies that you watch because it's bad. Such a movie that you watch just to see it's shitty craftsmanship. Supposedly a horror, I cannot imagine how anyone can be afraid of a claymation bug, especially one that is translucent in nature where you can see the actor's legs behind it.Even with no budget, a little bit of attention to detail and even an attempt at making this movie believable would have sucked the fun right out of it, as they would have had to replace all of the actors and the entire story with it. If I had nothing to make fun of while it was playing, I would have stopped it after 10 minutes, and put on some quality show like Spunge Bob Square Pants (HAR HAR HAR).I Strongly recommend that Brett Piper get with Quintin Terrantino and Really pump out some feces.:)
insomniac_rod
Wait no, we should call it an INSULT to the 50's monster movies!Atrocities like "Monster of the Loch Ness" are "The Godfather" compared to this utter piece of crap!I'm very angry. I can't believe I spent 80 mins. of my life watching it. It's not that I'm masoquist but I truly enjoy cheesy, low budget b-movies, but this THING went too far.The acting is sad! The F/X are horrible! laughable! The "Evil Dead 2" reference is atrocious! The lead male character dressing like Ash and sawing the "creature" made me wanna puke! Then there's a guy trying to act/look like Joe Pesci. That was the saddest thing. Horrible movie with horrible intentions.There's no fear to God and this movie proves it.PLEASE AVOID IT. PLEASE. 0/10!! Flush it! Probably the worst "horror" movie I've seen and that's a lot to say!
pseira
Well I just finished watching the movie and I regret wasting every second...There's 80 bad minutes of my life that I'm not getting back... The flick is unbelievably "not good". The actors suck, the not-so-special effects suck - at times they are worse than the movies shot at the 50s - the dialogue is tacky...The only scene that caught my attention was Alexxus' naked scene. I just CAN'T believe somebody actually WROTE a script and the whole movie was not improvised! I also can't believe that there is a director out there who was so happy with his work that he allowed this piece of...#### to be produced..DO NOT BY ANY MEANS RENT THIS MOVIE!! IT'S BOTH A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY!