Boring

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

A familiar tale is given a familiar re-telling, a middle of the road monster movie which starts off pretty well before degenerating into the typical action-orientated scenario, where precise plotting goes out of the window, character traits are forgotten and everyone runs around in the jungle trying to avoid getting chewed on by the hungry bad guys. This colourful production at least has a good pedigree behind it: it's the second production from Brian Yuzna's Spanish Hammer-wannabes Fantastic Factory, and the direction is by none other than THE HIDDEN's Jack Scholder. As Yuzna and THE HIDDEN are both established favourites of mine I found myself looking forward to this movie a lot, the second from Fantastic Factory after the failure of FAUST and a more traditional B-movie story. I was disappointed for the most part, but the film is not without the odd moment of interest here and there.After the opening titles – the longest I've seen, and accounting for about a dozen different production companies – things are looking pretty good in the movie. We get plane wrecks, an invisible UFO and even a weird-looking alien creature making a guest appearance before the plot begins for real. The characters are the usual clichéd bunch but with a definite Hispanic feel, with only four non-Spanish members of the cast. The dialogue is adequate for the movie and there are a couple of interesting characters amongst the native "redshirts" (the extras in STAR TREK who always died), token black character and stereotyped macho types. The first is the tetchy doctor, Leon, not a villain but sometimes close. Then we have Ravil Isyanov (OCTOPUS), once again amusing as the scientist member of the party, and Alex Reid (complete with gratuitous underwear scene) as the feisty female lead. Although I didn't personally care for Reid's sullen performance, it's certainly the best in the movie and miles above Chris Potter's bland male hero.The film is colourful throughout and makes fine use of the jungle locations. The first half is reminiscent of the old-fashioned jungle adventure movie, complete with plentiful dangers and lots of big guys shooting machine guns around into the bushes like in PREDATOR. We're awarded with some cool attacks by mutant creatures – a huge centipede/salamander thingy, some horrible ticks, and warnings of a nastier creature, a giant spider. They also throw in a predictable nightmare sequence and some unwanted sentimental guff to keep it going. At this point, Yuzna and crew (including SFX ace Steve Johnson) throw in the film's highlight, an ultra-gory death involving a man's body getting invaded by ticks which then pop out of his mouth, chest and finally his eyeball in an ultra-splattery moment of graphic gore. Anyone who's seen Yuzna's previous TICKS will know what to expect – this guy truly loves bodily intrusion and destruction.Once the spider makes an appearance, the film takes a downward turn and loses what little intelligence it possessed in the first half (attention to detail, personalities, realism, etc.). The latter half of the film consists of cast members getting picked off one by one by the barely-seen menace, which itself is a pretty poor creation. Aside from a gruesome moment with a guy being cocooned, the deaths are all quick and precise and disappointingly tame. They make up for it with gobbets of gristle and slime, so insect-haters take care. The end of the film is incredibly contrived and not all that interesting, as the indestructible spider finally meets its maker and the survivors stagger off into the horizon. ARACHNID is worth watching for the first half of the film and the truly nasty tick death scene, but needs switching off when the spider makes an appearance and it just becomes a tame embarrassment.

"Arachnid" ,although not scarier than the old estimable "Tarentula" features a truly great scene : the heroine's nightmare,when her late brother appears ;the scene of the scientist caught up in the cocoon and who is "part of it" is also spooky .The rest is businesS as usual,"look,who's going to die ,now? " run of the mill,with things borrowed from "Alien(s)" (but the actress is not as energetic as Sigourney Weaver) and "predator",among many others.THat said ,as the director does not use special effects too much,the movie is as watchable as many average horror movies.And the scene of the brother is really a good thing ,if all the movie had been on the same level......

Usually, good directors filming the horror or semi-horror/sci-fi films choose a phobia from wide range of existing phobias and play on it...That works greatly on the people who actually have such phobia or are close to it, and it also works good for people who don't have, but get to understand after film, why other people have such phobia...Situation is completely different with Arachnid!If you take this movie and make someone who struggles from arachnophobia to watch it couple of times, I am sure he will be cured.Giant spider monster is so dumb, so funny, so stupidly made... that everyone will understand for good, that there's nothing we can afraid of, even if spiders will really become that big.Recommended for psychologists, use the film, cure the people!

Arachnid is the sort of movie you stumble upon at 1am surfing the televisial graveyard slot looking for a movie that's so bad it's good. And once it ensnares you in it's clustered, tepid badly strung plot thread it injects you with mind numbing, paralysing venomPlot:Pilot crash lands on island. He spots an alien. Alien is killed by squiggly monder. Squiggly monster proceeds to attack him. Over 2 months pass. Some research team shows up to research into why the people are being attacked by spiders. They believe a new strain on spiders is on the island. Spiders eat the crew. One of the spiders is crew leaders father. Spiders are alien spiders...If all this sounds messy to the point of damaging your immersion do not worry - The directors camera/microphone can be seen falling clearly into plain sightshortly after the crew lang anyway and it will continue to do so throughout the film.If the script and directing are this lousy what a bad movie really needs is some truly horrific cheesy acting to back it Sadly all it can offer is mere below average underacting throughout. The numerous times characters in this film are unconcerned that a member of their team is dying maked you wonder if the entier cast is collectivly made up on sociopaths and serial killers. All of this would be bad enough. But wait, there's more, finally we get to the main featue - the spider.I would advise you unlucky folks who have stayed the course to this point in the movie to have shots ready if you want to find any hope of appreciating this movie for the special effects. It is the most average, uninspired, run of the mill, dull, stock, witless example of cheap, flimsy cgi I have witnessed in a long time. It almost offers the torch to every other bad element in the movie and let's them shine by comparison. Almost. Sadly, the worst thing about this movie, as stated earlier, is that it is so mindnumbingly below average it doesn't even register at a level of bad that can be considered funny. And that really is bad.Nothing here works or makes sense of any kind. When the creature is shot all the bullets bounce off with no effect whatsoever. Later, when the movie is nearing the close, the lead picks up a gun and before you can say curtains squeezes the trigger and gaining a critical hit with every last bullet entering producing spider gunk.The redeeming factor? There isn't one.