Arachnid is not to be confused with Arachnia, the similarly titled giant spider movie I reviewed earlier this year. At least Arachnid is a real word.
Its alternative title is Spider Island, but I’m going to use Arachnid so I don’t confuse it with the 2026 movie Spider Island that I reviewed recently.
Arachnid is produced by Fantastic Factory, a short-lived production label that released nine genre movies between 2000-2005, including Beyond Re-Animator (2003).
Jack Sholder directs. You might remember him as the director of the underrated A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) or the Kiefer Sutherland/Lou Diamond Phillips action comedy Renegades (1989).
The giant spider in Arachnid has one of the best spider designs in giant spiderdom. It has all the features you would expect – eight legs, eight eyes, mandibles etc. But it is also an alien from outer space, so it has extra features like a spiked proboscis that swings down and impales its victims.
This thing wouldn’t look out of place in Starship Troopers.
The spider is brought to life using a life-sized puppet with moving parts covered in glistening fluids. It’s tactile and real looking, although the movements are predictably clunky. But it still beats the (thankfully limited) CGI shots of it running.
Intergalactic Zoo
Arachnid opens with a cloaked spaceship sucking up the ocean near Guam. Fish, whales, and all sorts of marine life are sucked up an enormous waterspout into the ship.
A pilot in a stealth bomber sees this and investigates. He loses power and ejects from his craft, which crashes into the spaceship. Stay with me.
The spaceship then crashes onto an island. The pilot parachutes to the wreckage and witnesses the humanoid alien pilot being killed by a giant spider, which I assume was onboard as well? Yes, I’m asking.
They never make it clear what the aliens were doing. The convoluted opening is simply a means to an end – get giant spider on island.
But let’s try to make sense of it. The aliens could have been fishing – gathering up food to take back home. Or maybe they were thirsty, and the fish were collateral damage.
Perhaps they were from the future and were trying to collect humpback whales to appease a rogue space probe.
But the theory I am leaning towards is that they were gathering creatures for an intergalactic zoo. The crash released the animals gathered so far, including the giant spider.
Meet the Spider Food Cast
A native from the island is admitted to a hospital in Guam with weird bites and an unidentified infection. A doctor and a group of archetypes (his busty assistant, an adventurer, a couple of mercenaries, a nerdy spider expert, a group of native guides that think blow darts are the pinnacle of weapons technology, and their pilot), fly to the island to discover the source of the infection.
The lead character is Mercer, the female pilot, played by Alex Reid (The Descent). Mercer is sufficiently easy on the eyes, and the script finds an excuse to strip her down to her bra at one point (but alas no further, for the boob connoisseurs amongst you).
The plane’s electrics cut out as they reach the island, causing them to crash land. Something to do with magnetic interference. The same phenomenon causes communication issues so they can’t call for rescue.
I assume it’s due to the alien ship, but it is never explained, and we don’t see the ship again. It is another throwaway plot point that exists purely as a means to an end – to strand them on the island.
Nevertheless, isolating a group of explorers on a creepy island is a solid set up for any monster movie. I’m pretty sure at least three Jurassic Park sequels started that way.
But I won’t lie to you – the execution is poor. The characters rarely break out of their one-dimensional archetypes, the acting is variable and the dialogue is atrocious.
At least Mercer receives a character arc. She starts off as bitchy and defensive but mellows as the movie progresses. She’s capable of handling herself but also needs a man to help her out of a few scrapes.
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
Partway through the movie, Mercer reveals that the pilot at the beginning is her brother (the human one, not the alien one, although that would have been a nice twist). She is investigating his disappearance as the Air Force gave up on him.
I wish they had done more with this subplot. In one scene she finds her brother alive, except he is a giant spider underneath, wearing his skin as a suit. The gory practical effects complement the strangeness of the scene. It is without doubt the most interesting moment in Arachnid…until she wakes up. It’s all a dream.
But why not make him a human-spider hybrid? As the characters explore the island, the spider expert (Dr Capri) keeps finding mutated species. It seems that the giant spider is merging its DNA with other species and creating hybrids. At various points our heroes fall victim to mutated ticks and a mutated snake monster thing.
Within that framework, a human-spider hybrid is perfectly reasonable, but they do nothing with it and she never finds him. A good idea, wasted.
Hope for all Mankind
Our heroes travel to the native village but discover it deserted (the spider did it). The mutated ticks and snake monster make their presence known, resulting in some gory death scenes.
The gore is where Arachnid excels. The effects team brings their A-game when all around them are phoning it in. Even director Jack Sholder has alluded to this:
“I got to live in Barcelona for six months and, you know, they paid me well. Everything was good except I had to go to work everyday and shoot a dumb script.”
Anyway, it takes about an hour for the giant spider to make an appearance, but then we get spider action for the last 30 minutes.
The male lead is a guy called Lev Valentine (Chris Potter) who tries to live up to his name with some awkward advances towards Mercer, but she shuts him down. Later on, they develop something of a mutual attraction, despite having limited chemistry, and are also the ones who survive the movie.
Where slasher movies have the ‘final girl,’ monster movies have the ‘final couple.’ Occasionally a third character – usually a comedy relief supporting type, survives too. In this case it is one of the native guides.
I think the message they are trying to convey is one of hope for mankind – the man and the woman survive and can propagate the species, while the evil giant spider species has been snuffed out.
Or maybe I am reading too much into it, especially as the final sting shows a second giant spider lurking on the island.
All Spiders go to Heaven
I must mention one funny scene involving the death of the spider expert, Dr Capri. The giant spider encases him in a cocoon and lays her eggs in him.
The others try to rescue him but he knows he is doomed and tells them to leave. Mercer consoles him by saying ‘all spiders go to heaven.’
This line is delivered with complete teary-eyed sincerity. I realise the guy likes spiders, but at this point I reckon he’s gone off them a bit. Also – all spiders go to heaven? Is it supposed to make him feel better that the spiders currently eating him alive will have a terrific afterlife as well?
I wouldn’t want there to be any spiders in Heaven. There would be millions of them. Maybe that is where the saying ‘I am on cloud 9’ comes from. I always wondered what was wrong with clouds 1-8 and now I know – they are full of spiders. Only cloud 9 remains spider-free, hence why it is a desirable place to be.
I also like how the movie attempts to explain how giant spiders can exist. In reality, giant spiders are impossible because they would crush themselves due to the square-cube law. Arachnid introduces the idea of the alien spider having a separate inner skeleton as well as an exoskeleton to support its weight.
It’s unnecessary, but I liked that attention to detail.
Other than that, Arachnid has potential but seems content to serve up monster slop on par with a Sci-Fi original. Oh well.
Rating: 4 spider legs out of 8
