Movie Review: Arachnia (2003)

Synopsis: A plane containing a paleontologist, his assistant, three students and the pilot gets knocked out of the sky by a meteorite, crashing in the middle of nowhere. All survive and are given shelter by a farmer. However, they soon find their lives in danger from giant arachnids the meteorite woke from an ancient cave.

Who's in it? The movie stars Rob Monkiewicz, Irene Joseph, David Bunce, Bevin McGraw and Alexxus Young. 


Review: My wife and I decided to watch a movie while eating dinner last night and both because we've been on a bit of a big spider kick, and because it seemed fitting on the same day as the solar eclipse, we gave this one a try. While my expectations weren't overly high when it came to this film, I must admit it was much worse than I was expecting.

This movie had two major problems. The first was the special effects. This is a movie that was made in 2003 but the killer spiders (or whatever arachnid they were supposed to be) looked like something out of the early 80s. My wife even described it as Claymation-like. I'm sorry, but it is hard to be even remotely scared by a monster when it looks that fake. 

The other thing that hurt this film was it seemed to lack direction. It was hard to tell if the filmmakers wanted this to be a scary movie, a comedy or a soft-core porn film because it contained the elements for at least two of those. The last one especially, between the two coeds, Trina (McGraw) and Kelly (Young) using an old bathtub as an excuse to be naked together in the kitchen and then later fooling around in bed.

The sad part is, if it weren't for those things, this might have been a halfway decent movie. The premise wasn't overly farfetched (at least as far as this kind of movie goes), and the remoteness of their crash site could have added a little more desperation to the film since help wouldn't be readily available. I don't know if it would have been a monster movie classic, but it could have at least been watchable with a bit more work.

Final Opinion: As I said, this was a movie that could have had some potential. However, the weak special effects and the porn-like material made it hard to take this seriously enough to enjoy.

My Grade: F

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