Review: Arachnophobia

Big city doc Jeff Daniels moves his family to a small Northern Californian farm to become the local GP. But in addition to suffering the suspicion of the locals, the poor doc must soon deal with an even bigger problem- people start dropping like flies, seemingly from deadly tropical spider bites. Did I mention that Daniels hates spiders? Hey, maybe that’s why the movie’s called Arachnophobia? Do ‘ya think? Harley Jane Kozak is the boring wife, John Goodman is a weird exterminator, Julian Sands a spider expert, Henry Jones is the cantankerous doctor who refuses to give his job to Daniels, and other locals are played by C-graders Roy Brocksmith (from “Total Recall”), Kathy Kinney (who moved up a grade or two a few years later when she co-starred on “The Drew Carey Show”) and Peter Jason (just about every John Carpenter movie you’ve ever seen).

 

Supremely overrated, terminally dull, ‘safe’ horror-comedy from Spielberg’s best bud Frank Marshall (the OK B movie “Congo”), that gives us few interesting characters (Goodman and a well-cast Sands are the only standouts), no horror, and aside from Goodman’s comic bug guy, nothing to laugh at. Casting Daniels (talented guy, but he can’t carry a film like this on his own) and uber-vanilla Kozak as our supposedly sympathetic leads was a major mistake, but really, the whole thing is like a poor attempt to do what Joe Dante has already done better twice before (“Piranha”, and oddly enough “Gremlins” for Spielberg who also produced this film). The whole spoof of small-town America spoof wrapped in a monster movie spoof thing has simply been done to death (and hell, even some of the subsequent films were better than this one, even the goofy giant spider flick “Eight-Legged Freaks” was a bit better)

 

Also, spiders might be scary in real life (and they are, trust me, they are), but on-screen, they make our fear of them look stupid- unless they’re giant spiders, which they are not here. Best scenes take place at the beginning, with Sands and co in Venezuela, having a bit of an old Universal horror feel to them. The screenplay is by Don Jakoby (“Blue Thunder”) and Wesley Strick (“Wolf”, and the unnecessary Scorsese remake of “Cape Fear”), from a story by Al Williams and Jakoby.

 

Rating: C