Spider Island is a British made horror comedy set on a tropical island resort in a vague part of the world. Actors from Mauritius play most of the staff, so let’s just go with that. I mean…it isn’t a mystery I should have to solve, but whatever.
Ethically challenged hotel developer David (Andy Nyman) has built a luxury resort on an island previously designated as a nature reserve. To promote the resort, he invites a group of social media influencer turds to the island for a free weekend of partying.
But some uninvited guests turn up, and they want their island back. It’s spiders. You probably guessed.
Fantasy Island
But before that, we get treated to lots of gratuitous nudity, sex and general debauchery. Nah, not really. It’s very disappointing. They cast all these good-looking actors but only the men are allowed to take off their shirts and let others neck shots off their chests. Who wants to see that?
One male influencer gets out of bed and treats us to a full ass platter as he struts to the bathroom. After a spider gets him, his girl gets up to investigate, but carefully wraps the bedsheets around her like a goddamn mummy. Boo!
Even when the ladies are wearing bikinis, they are covered up with wraparound sarongs, shorts or otherwise obscured. It’s quite deliberate, and boring.
I’m not being a pervert here. If I want to see moving images of scantily clad women, I hear the internet is quite good for that. That’s not the point.
The point is that women are vitamins for the eyes. No wait, that’s what one of the Mauritian characters says. It’s a good line, but that’s not what I’m getting at.
The point is the impression is creates. Showing some flesh means the filmmakers are making a movie for adults. It means they are being daring and unpredictable and anything could happen. This shit is just tame, which doesn’t bode well seeing as it’s supposed to be a horror movie.
Love Island
That said, Director Christopher Smith has a solid record when it comes to horror, including Creep (2004), Severance (2006), Triangle (2009) and Black Death (2010).
Severance is closest to Spider Island because they share a darkly comedic tone. Severance featured office workers on a team building weekend that turns deadly. Spider Island features social media influencers on an all-expenses paid weekend that turns deadly. Andy Nyman and Tim McInnerny appear in both films.
The lead character is Clara, played by Rose Williams. Clara is an investigative journalist looking into David’s questionable business practices. She used to live on the island but left when her mother divorced her father. Her father, Curtis (Tim McInnerny) still lives on the island, running another hotel.
Wait, what? So it’s okay for her father to run a hotel but not David?
To be fair, the movie tries to address this point by saying that Curtis’ hotel is exclusively for nature researchers. I don’t buy it, but they tried.
And it isn’t like Clara is favouring Curtis. She hates him for no good reason that I could see. Our ‘heroine’ is somehow more insufferable than the influencers – a nagging, humourless, holier-than-thou activist whose investigative technique involves crashing a party and shouting at David for destroying the wildlife. Not exactly undercover, is it?
Monster Island
The resort’s air conditioning isn’t working, and when they finally fire it up, it disturbs the spiders living in the airducts. These spiders are regular sized, one-hit-kill super predators (of course they are).
It’s funny to see the spiders raining down like confetti on the influencers, but the movie takes too long to unleash them and the deaths aren’t particularly inventive. I thought killing off influencers would be far more satisfying than this.
The spider effects are well done. In fact, the whole movie is competently made, with good acting and solid production values. But something is missing. Seasoning.
Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ve seen too many of these spider movies to be creeped out anymore. Or maybe Spider Island just isn’t scary or funny enough.
There are some bright spots. A character called Mongoose (Divian Ladwa) stands out as an influencer whose viewers like watching him ingest drugs. He goes on a magic mushroom trip, then licks a cane toad and ends up communing with the spiders. It’s a small, random part of the movie but funny.
Andy Nyman has fun playing pantomime villain David, but the MVP of Spider Island is Tim McInnerny (how the hell do you say that surname, anyway?).
As well as being an environmentalist hotel owner, Curtis is a former West End actor who quotes Shakespeare. He carries real presence and is both funny and sympathetic. He is far too good for this movie, but at least he got to spend a few week in Mauritius.
And who can hate a movie where David Attenborough narrates the necessary spider exposition? That’s class.
Assault on Devil’s Island
Spider Island’s attempts at environmentalist messaging are half-hearted, but it beats heavy handed. The message couldn’t be more obvious – nature fights back against the hubris of man. But seeing as that makes the spiders the good guys, they can’t end the movie in the usual manner (blowing them all up, killing the queen etc).
Which reminds me – a queen spider does appear at the end, which I predicted in my trailer review. It is larger than the others, but only slightly larger than you would see in nature. It is difficult to say exactly because it doesn’t appear in a shot with anything in the foreground to give it scale. Where’s Martin Brody when you need him?
The point is that Spider Island qualifies as a giant spider movie. Just.
But how do you end your movie when your environmentalist heroine can’t kill the queen? She either has to abandon her beliefs and do it anyway, which creates a far different message for the movie (something along the lines of ‘fuck nature’) or have a weird stand-off that ends with both parties walking away.
I won’t spoil it, but the end whimpers rather than roars, and despite its high body count, Spider Island overall comes across as serviceable but rather tame.
It’s a shame because the basic ingredients are there. It just needed more – more bite, more balls and more boobs. Only one of those is metaphorical.
I think I’ll watch Horrors of Spider Island again.
Rating: 4 spider legs out of 8
