If you’re afraid of spiders or generally skeeved out by bugs, 1990s Arachnophobia pulls no punches. It’s an All-American creature feature that discovers what happens when a venomous breed of arachnid hitches a ride from Venezuela to a quiet town in the States. I do not have a specific fear of spiders, but I certainly fall into the “do not come near me” camp, as I can imagine many do. To put it bluntly: Bugs are gross! They have their purpose in the ecosystem but are otherwise seemingly mindless creatures in desperate need of “yassification” and a friendly voiceover.
Why Arachnophobia Is the Ultimate Creature Feature
As the film’s admittedly arachnophobic Dr. Ross Jennings (played by Jeff Daniels) insists, the act of a spider crawling on you is “the feeling of utter helplessness, being explored by an alien thing.” Oddly enough, in this way, Arachnophobia has something in common with a film like Alien. The infamous Xenomorphs are likened to bugs in its sequel, and for a good reason: They’re ugly, they quietly shift through the environment, they bite, and they lay eggs in undesirable locations. Spiders are admittedly not as intimidating as multi-mouthed space monsters, but Arachnophobia raises the stakes of the average creature feature. It doesn’t care if you’re afraid of spiders because it effectively uses live ones (no props or janky early-90s CGI here) to cause you to squirm in your seat like you’re watching fresh gore splatter across the screen. A Xenomorph might not be coming for you anytime soon, but you’ll think twice about that slight tingle on your leg after getting a closeup of these bad boys.
A Slow-Burn Horror with Real Spiders
Director Frank Marshall takes the slow-burn approach, weaving a crescendo of webs, fangs, and near-misses toward a frantic showdown with the eight-legged freaks in a dingy basement. Like Ti West’s new horror hit X, the plot gets underway after some raunchy sex in a barn sets things in motion, although here it’s the Venezuelan arachnid mating with a common house spider. A new, deadly breed is birthed, and they are set loose on the town, leaving a trail of bitten bodies in their wake like a small-town slasher. However, unlike the typically methodical slasher, the victims are truly at random. Spiders do not have vendettas or intent beyond survival, which makes their unknown presence all the more hair-raising.
The Unsettling Realism of Everyday Terrors
The second act highlights this most unsettling trait by giving us a voyeuristic perspective of their movements. We watch as they crawl into shoes and helmets, hide behind lampshades just out of reach, are unknowingly scooped up in handfuls of popcorn, and leave webs in common places we brush against. In a scene that I’m sure gave the lady Gwyneth Paltrow some ideas for her snake oil brand, Goop, one unlucky teen, even washes webbing into her hair. Before long, the cast is acutely aware of the true nature of the spiders descending upon their town, which gives way to some humorous moments of art imitating life – I can’t be the only one who’s brandished a household object like a weapon to sneak up on a gargantuan bug that amounted to nothing more than a shadow.
A Climax That Will Haunt Arachnophobes
Once the climax hits, the spiders erupt in full force, engulfing the Jennings home and trapping the family inside. They soon cover every surface, and any attempt at pushing through to the outside will surely get one killed. If a viewer with arachnophobia makes it to this point, it’s here that a panic attack might occur. The good Dr. Jennings is eventually overwhelmed, tumbling through the rotten floorboards of his country home into the basement, which also happens to be the queen spider’s nest. Realistically, this man is swatting away spiders that aren’t abnormally large. Still, his phobia compounded with the deadly nature of these creatures makes for a very thrilling battle, Ridley Scott be damned.
Jeff Daniels as the Everyman Hero
Before long, the home’s circuit breaker is damaged, and under the flashing lights in the dark of the cellar, my comparison to Alien is even more evident. In his sweaty basement surrounded by poisonous arachnids, Jeff Daniels is the everyman Ellen Ripley. Instead of an actual flamethrower, he’s brandishing an aerosol can with a lighter, blasting spiders and bracing for their counterattack. I may not have used such a makeshift weapon, but I’ve certainly been there, ready to burn it all down to achieve victory. When you know something so repulsive is lurking in the shadows, nothing else matters, right?
What Arachnophobia Teaches Us About Fear
By the end of the film, the Jennings family prevails and leaves the country life to relocate back to their natural habitat, San Francisco. A minor earthquake strikes but leaves them mostly unfazed. The moral of the story? Fear and danger are all relative. The spiders aren’t a menace to society back in Venezuela, and a city dweller like Dr. Jennings is more at peace with an earthquake than walking with children in nature, surrounded by creepy crawlies. Maybe if I were from Australia, a land where baseball-sized spiders are a common occurrence, I wouldn’t be so jumpy when confronted with one of average size. But for anyone even slightly bothered by bugs or spiders, Arachnophobia is sure to send you to space.