Courtesy Syfy
In the first eight minutes, Arachnid features the following: a cloaked alien spacecraft sucking water up out of the ocean, a stealth fighter pilot, a mid-air collision, a jungle confrontation, and an invisible predator. Not an arachnid in sight. Confused viewers could be forgiven if they thought they were watching Star Trek IV, Hangar 18, or Predator.
For viewers who stick with it, the plot becomes slightly less opaque. The spider is actually an extraterrestrial predator. Its eggs produce different forms of vermin, from killer ticks that infest human hosts to giant spitting centipedes that shout "WHHEEEE!" This extraterrestrial species is evolving in a highly accelerated fashion, which is bad news for the alien who brought it to earth (promptly killed) and the fighter pilot who collided with the ship (who…well, we find out his fate later).
Stumbling into this hot mess are our victims – err, protagonists. Valentine (Chris Potter) is the hero sent to investigate the spider bite victims of a tribe in Guam. Mercer (Alex Reid) is the spunky pilot who has the skills to fly his crew to the island. There's also some ex-Marine muscle, and the obligatory scientists. Noteworthy among these is the oddball comic relief, Henry Capri (Ravil Isyanov), who is the author of Arachnid Fun Facts and our source of exposition for everything regarding arachnid lore.
The director, Jack Sholder of The Hidden fame, makes a bold move in using a giant puppet instead of CGI for the spider. This works exceptionally well when the thing interacts with actors, and less well when it needs to move quickly. At one point it looks like the spider is filmed at high speed while being pulled along on a dolly.
There's not a lot to Arachnid: the Marines quip wise and die, the natives shout in another language and die, and the scientist explains monster biology and then dies. But the script does take an unconventional approach – there are not one but two mercy killings, the monster isn't killed off by the masculine hero, and even one of the native extras helps save the day.
Arachnid isn't all that bad. There are plot holes big enough to drop a giant spider through, but they're easy to ignore. The puppet doesn't always look convincing, but after being fed a steady diet of awful CGI on the Syfy channel it has its own simple charm. Even the script has its moments. It's certainly good enough for a monster flick named after an eight-legged invertebrate.
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