Main cast: Chris Potter (Lev Valentine), Alex Reid (Loren Mercer), José Sancho (Dr Samuel Leon), Neus Asensi (Susana Gabriel), Ravil Isyanov (Henry Capri), Luis Lorenzo (Pablo Reyes), Rocqueford Allen (Bear), and Robert Gabriel Vicencio (Toe Boy)
Director: Jack Sholder
Right from its first second, Arachnid is obviously a low budget monster flick that actually had a theatrical reason when it’s more at home in lowbrow cable and streaming channels. Really, this movie is made for Shudder even before streaming is a thing.
However, in spite of the attachment of Brian Yuzna as a producer, don’t expect Screaming Mad George to be helming the special effects here. In fact, don’t expect anything, because what one gets here is more goofy than scary.
It’s apparent in the opening scene that the monster spider in question is an alien one, as a really bad special effect of a “translucent” spaceship—more like some fuzzy outline of one—is chased by a plane until the two ships crash onto an island. The human pilot comes across the wreckage of the spaceship and sees a holographic projection of ET’s uglier brother getting killed by a giant spider thing before he is attacked by something. Gee, I wonder what that something can be…
Cut to later. Natives of the island are apparently being infected by a strange virus, so Dr Samuel Leon and his assistant Susana mount an expedition to go there and investigate further. These two and their entourage have no protective wear whatsoever, so I guess maybe they want to catch the virus for some reason.
Joining them are the pilot Susanna, the arachnologist Henry Capri that wants to study the unique spiders in that island, and mercenary Lev Valentine and his buddies Bear and Reyes. Once there, they are accompanied by natives led by Toe Boy, because this movie came out at a time before such a thing would trigger massive outrage from perpetually-online white people.
Here’s a shocker: Loren is looking for her brother, the guy that is killed in the opening scene. Here’s an even bigger shocker: the giant alien spider is still around, but there are other giant critters running around too.
The rest of the movie is pretty predictable for the most part, as the characters are stock stereotypes. There is only one final woman allowed in the genre, and since Loren is portrayed as the tough-talking action babe, it’s clear that Susana is not meant to survive the whole thing, for example, and the scientist type is obviously not meant for this world for long too.
Still, this movie is quite entertaining, because Chris Potter, whom I can never tell apart from Linden Ashby, seems to be having a ball in this role, and his enthusiasm is infectious. He looks the part of an action hero, and he even takes off his shirt to prove it in one yummy scene. However, instead of going all gigachad and humorless, Lev also displays a cute sense of humor.
Alex Reid has a more thankless role as Loren starts out a predictable “I am a strong woman and I don’t need any help… HELP!” wench but in a pleasant subversion of the trope, she becomes the action heroine of the movie here, while Lev is rendered mostly out of the scene toward the end. I also like that she’s not super competent in that role, which makes sense as she’s not a trained and experienced mercenary like Lev.
All in all, this one won’t break new grounds or even offer a classy highbrow form of entertainment, but it’s actually adequate for a slow boring afternoon, provided one doesn’t expect too much from it.
