Earth Vs The Spider has previously been reviewed by Wrenage here. Please check it out. As you probably know by now, this article is less of a review and more of a humorous play-by-play walkthrough of the movie.
I was looking forward to Earth Vs The Spider, because I assumed it would be a remake of the 1958 giant spider movie of the same name and would provide a unique opportunity to compare the two.
But alas, that’s out the window because somehow Earth Vs the Spider isn’t a remake. Perhaps it’s for the best. I’m not sure I could handle the excitement of Carol’s bracelet saga for a second time.
The title isn’t a coincidence, of course. Cinemax produced a series of movies in the early 2000s that paid tribute to classic 1950s monster movies by giving them the same title, even though the movies themselves were different.
In this case, the title makes even less sense than it did the first time around. The first movie was Small Town America vs the Spider. This movie is a remake of The Mask that transforms halfway through into a remake of The Fly, except…with two extra legs.
There’s no threat to earth whatsoever, or even a town. Maybe an apartment block. It’s small scale, is my point, but that’s not a bad thing.
Arachnid Avenger
I was originally going to liken it to Spider-Man, but then I realised it was released a year before Tobey Maguire’s first Spidey outing (the character of Spider-Man is several decades older of course).
But the first half of Earth Vs the Spider is definitely a superhero movie, which is great because it’s another new genre for my giant spiders to play around in.
It wasn’t marketed as superhero movie. The movie’s poster pitches it as a straight horror, featuring a creepy silhouetted body cocooned in web alongside three of the characters looking concerned in one of those floating head tree formations. It looks like a David Fincher movie, but the movie itself is lighter than that, and all the better for it.
An upbeat jazz track plays with the credits over images of a comic book superhero called Arachnid Avenger, who has three pairs of arms plus two legs. This equals eight, so the number checks out.
We meet nice guy Quentin making breakfast. He lives in a dingy apartment with his dog, who he talks to a lot. Quentin loves comics (his dog is named Thor) and is particularly obsessed with Arachnid Avenger.
As he makes breakfast, Quentin tells Thor he wished he had another hand to carry stuff. This is what we call ‘foreshadowing.’
Ordinary Schmo
Quentin likes Stephanie, a trainee nurse who lives down the hall. He makes sure he leaves for work at the same time as her so they’ll meet in the hallway, but he won’t ask her out because he thinks she’s out of his league. He’s right, to be fair.
They get hassled by two street punks and she’s the one who stands up to them, which bruises his ego. He’s an ordinary schmo with low confidence who yearns to be special, hence The Mask comparisons (plus the dog thing).
Quentin is a security guard for a company called Biochemco, a research lab for technologies with military applications (stop me if you’ve heard this one before). Quentin and his partner Nick witness tarantulas being injected with something that Nick dubs ‘mojo juice,’ which makes them invincible.
What a wonderful idea, what could go wrong?
When the lab is raided by men in masks, the intruders get involved in a shooting match with the police and finish second. One cop is killed, as is Nick. Quentin gets blamed and fired because we’ve got to get this movie started somehow.
In the aftermath, one of the spiders is crawling on the floor and a man squishes it. The spider pops back into shape and walks away. That’s the invincibility they mentioned earlier. The mojo juice works!
Disappointingly, Earth Vs the Spider isn’t about the invincible spider who escapes the lab and grows to colossal dimensions. We never see him again, but it’s a sequel waiting to happen. He even gets a name: Hairy Larry.
Surely they wouldn’t name him unless they had bigger plans for him down the road. How about Hairy Larry and the soapbox racers? Sorry, must stay on point.
Brundlespider
You might be wondering who the big bad is, if not a mutated, ill-tempered spider. Or maybe you’re not, seeing as I already mentioned that the second half of the movie turns into a remake of The Fly.
That’s right, Quentin is the antagonist (that’s the baddie) as well as the protagonist (goodie). He shoots himself up with mojo juice so he won’t be a loser anymore and undergoes…amendments.
It’s a heck of a gamble, injecting himself with an experimental jab with little proof of safety or efficacy. These geeks will do anything for an origin story. That’s why I had the COVID vaccine. Disappointingly, I haven’t turned into Brundlespider yet.
The lab is where we first meet Dan Ackroyd’s police officer, Inspector Frank Grillo. Frank Grillo is also a real actor who plays Crossbones in the Captain America films. This movie is so far ahead of its time that it’s referencing geek culture that hasn’t happened yet.
Anyway, Frank is investigating a geographically specific serial killer dubbed the Midtown Murderer, but he also investigates the Biochemco crime scene.
We never find out who the intruders are, by the way. They only exist to set the plot in motion, but it would give the movie another dimension if they played a part. Perhaps they could be part of a shadowy spider-worshiping cult who believe Hairy Larry is their God. Oh well.
Requiem for a Dream
After suffering flu-like symptoms for a couple of days, Quentin starts to feel better. He visits a bar to confront Officer Williams, a cop who beat him up after the raid for getting his partner killed. Quentin wears a beret, so he’s already showing signs of increased bravery.
Officer Williams is canoodling with Grillo’s wife, Trixie, who is lush in every sense of the word. Grillo arrives to take her home, and Quentin misses his opportunity to confront Williams. It’s a bit of a nothing scene, to be honest. It needed a proper showdown. In fact, just ignore the last two paragraphs. Except the beret joke – that was quite good.
At the same time, Stephanie arrives home and runs into the Midtown Murderer in the hall. I guess Stephanie lives in Midtown. What rotten luck. If she were an uptown girl, the worst she would have to deal with is some mechanics serenading her while servicing her car.
Anyway, Quentin arrives home and his burgeoning spidey senses tell him something is wrong. He confronts the killer, calls him an insect (the ultimate spider putdown) and throws him through a door, killing him. Add super strength to Quentin’s new powers.
The mojo juice gamble seems to be paying off. Or is it just the equivalent of summer in Requiem for a Dream where everyone’s having a good time, before winter comes and the characters go crazy, prostitute themselves in an ass-to-ass formation and have their arms cut off. Damn, that movie was dark.
Nerd alert
Stephanie is barely conscious but stirring. Quentin jumps out the second-floor window for no reason at all. It isn’t open. It seems he didn’t want her to know it was him who saved her, but why not? Nerds dream of this exact scenario (I mean…I’ve heard).
Even if he did want to remain anonymous, he could have just walked into his apartment, six feet away. He seems to fall like a regular person, so there’s no flying ability.
Unfortunately for Quentin, none of his new powers include the ability to ask a girl out. The next day he helps Stephanie take some storage boxes to the building’s basement. On the way they run into the two street punks that taunted them earlier in the movie.
This time Quentin teaches them a lesson. Stephanie gives him a look that suggests a sudden desire to bear his children.
It gets better. The bottom falls out of one of her boxes and guess what falls to the floor? Get your mind out of the gutter! It’s comic books. She’s a nerd too! But he STILL DOESN’T ASK HER OUT! How much more of a set up does he need?
Quentin visits his local comic store and a 1950s giant spider movie is playing on the television. I thought it would be the original Earth vs the Spider, but it isn’t. I didn’t recognise it at all, and started to panic that I might have missed one.
However, it appears that the scene was specifically shot for this movie using the original’s special effects techniques. Could they not afford a clip of the original? It would have been a nice nod.
Side Effects
At this point, some side effects of the mojo juice start emerging. Nothing major, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. For example, the veins in Quentin’s arm turn blue and resemble a cool tattoo, which a few people comment on favourably.
It’s sometimes painful and seems to be working its way up his arm, but I’m sure it’s just making him more super. Also, he develops super hearing, which makes it hard to get to sleep at night because all he can hear is his dog licking its paws (and God knows what else).
But hey, that’s a small price to pay for the gift of superpowers, right? What else? Oh yeah, he wakes up to find himself suspended from the ceiling by a long strand of web protruding from his chest in the spider equivalent of a wet dream.
Also, his body rejects normal food and he wants to eat his dog.
Shit, this is all going wrong, isn’t it?
Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man possessed organic spinnerets, but they were in his wrists. Earth Vs the Spider‘s chest shooter freaks me out. It’s also awkward from a practical point-of-view. He will have to go shirtless to use it and can’t exactly swing from building to building. You need the spinnerets in your arms so you can use them for leverage.
The power of certainty
Quentin seems fine with the chest spinnerets, but freaks out when he realises he wants to eat his dog. He runs out and ends up in a convenience store, where a robbery is taking place.
What is it with superheroes and catching criminals red-handed? When the police investigate a crime, they typically arrive after it occurs and have to engage in the hard slog of gathering evidence, finding the criminal and processing them through the criminal justice system, always with that element of doubt as to whether the person is actually guilty.
Superheroes have none of that because they ALWAYS catch them in the act. Their real superpower is the gift of absolute fucking certainty.
The robber drags the screaming female clerk over the counter and threatens to rob and rape her. Quentin puts him through a glass cabinet. The clerk wails at him, saying the guy isn’t a robber but her boyfriend!
Jesus lady, what kind of weird freaky shit are you into? But I’m pleased we got a nice twist on the ‘absolute certainty’ trope. It’s the perfect illustration that Quentin’s preconceptions about life as a superhero are absolute bullshit.
Quentin shoots the clerk with web, sticking her to the floor. His hand then morphs into a weird two-fingered claw that looks more like a pig’s trotter than a spider’s leg. I’m not sure what he’s supposed to do with it.
It then turns back into a hand, which was a surprise. Metamorphoses are usually a one-way street. The police arrive and as luck would have it, the cop on duty is Officer Williams. He sees the clerk and says ‘what kind of weird freaky shit are you into?’ That’s what I said! Quentin jumps him.
Mandibles
Quentin’s next mutation involves sprouting hairy mandibles from his mouth. Stephanie runs to his door when she hears him screaming, but he doesn’t let her in (definitely the right move).
He realises he’s left it too late to ask her out. He sort of asks her in past tense (would you ever have gone out with me?) but doesn’t actually ask her, despite being prompted, because what’s the point now? He’s got mandibles.
I feel for the guy. In The Fly, at least Jeff Goldblum got to bone Geena Davis for four hours straight before his dick fell off.
The next day, Grillo arrives at the convenience store crime scene. The clerk’s abusive boyfriend/roleplay world champion has been drained of fluids and now resembles an extra from The Walking Dead.
The forensics cop tells Grillo that the robber was thrown through the cabinet with huge force, which reminds him of the Midtown Murderer’s…murderer. Grillo then finds Williams’ badge covered in web and realises he may have come to harm.
Putting all these clues together, Grillo visits Quentin’s apartment block and finds web on the basement door. Somehow, he links all this to Quentin. There’s a new hero in town…supercop!
Later that day, Quentin kills the two street punks. He’s been on a good run so far but realises that sooner or later he’s going to kill someone who doesn’t deserve it. He knows he must be stopped.
He visits the owner of the comic book store, Han (who, in a double Star Wars reference, carries a toy lightsaber) to find out Arachnid Avenger’s weakness. Some superfan he turned out to be. Imagine a Superman fan not knowing what kryptonite is. Anyway, Arachnid Avenger’s weakness is not fire, like always, but his heart, which remains human and cannot regenerate.
The tangled web we weave
The stage is set for the final showdown. Grillo returns to the apartment block and enters the basement but doesn’t realise his wife Trixie has tailed him. She thinks Grillo has abducted Williams to avenge their affair, which is a fair assumption, but wrong.
Grillo actually frees Williams from a cocoon, only for Williams to shoot himself (bit hasty if you ask me, he seemed okay). Luckily for Grillo, Trixie doesn’t enter the room at that moment. If she had, it would have led to a misunderstanding. It’s odd that they didn’t go there. Instead, Quentin kills Trixie and abducts Steph (I feel like I know her well enough to call her that, I’m sure she won’t mind).
The final showdown of Earth Vs the Spider takes place in a derelict building. It’s short and intimate, which I like. Steph is stuck in a giant spider web when Grillo enters. Quentin has abducted her to goad Grillo into killing him, but he refuses.
Steph says ‘it’s not too late,’ which is optimistic to the point of delusion. Quentin looks absolutely terrible at this point. The creature effects, by the legendary Stan Winston no less, are amazing for a TV movie, or any movie.
Four giant spider legs have burst out of his back (plus his 4 regular limbs, which equals eight, so the number checks out). His head is elongated, with newly formed spider eyes and fully developed mandibles.
When Grillo refuses to kill him, Quentin launches himself at Steph. It’s another bluff to goad Grillo into shooting, and he obliges this time. Quentin dies while face-to-face with Steph in the web. Maybe I’m misinterpreting, but I swear she gives him a look that says she STILL wants his babies. Their spiderlings would have been ultra-cute.
Action figure
There’s a sting, everybody! We cut to Han’s comic bookstore and next to the model of Arachnid Avenger is a limited edition model of Quentinspider, or whatever his superhero name is. It’s not a happy ending but being immortalised in geek culture is what he would have wanted, I think.
Earth Vs the Spider is a genuinely decent movie and will rank quite high in my giant spider final reckoning. The dog survives, by the way. Quentin gives him to Steph to avoid temptation and he doesn’t feature much after that.
I would have preferred it if Thor was in jeopardy at the end, perhaps stuck in the web with Steph, whimpering softly. It would have upped the stakes. People care more about dogs in movies than people. We’re messed up like that.
Rating: 6 spider legs out of 8
