Arachnia - 2003

Arachnia - Released August 5, 2003 - Directed by Brett Piper

Low budget and a hurried shooting style plagues this giant-spider movie. A small plane with a charter flight of science students and their professor crash land into a rural landscape. The group, along with their pilot (Rob Monkiewicz) take refuge at what they think is an abandoned house, but the owner, a crotchety old man (James Aspden) shows up. Random noises and events lead them to suspect something is outside of the house, and soon they hear from the owner about the problem with the local enormous mutant spiders.

With disbelief out of the way (for the cast, not the audience, the spiders themselves are never that convincing) the group must escape and alert the military. To do so they have to devise a plan that doesn't include actually telling the military such an unbelievable story about giant spiders (the solution, which is funny, is given by science student and group surrogate mother-bear played by Irene Jospeh.)

The performances in the film range from fine to amateur. The cast plugs away with a lot of energy, but the editing, limited camera angles and pacing doesn't help the scenes that feature dialogue instead of fighting bugs. Director and writer Piper keeps Arachnia moving rapidly along, and it makes me wish someone could have handed him a better effects budget, more time to shoot his scenes and maybe some help to tighten everything up. Humor permeates the script which helps Arachnia to be much more fun than its production values would otherwise warrant.

AMAZON: Stream or DVD - Arachnia 2003

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