Let's be realistic.

Lack of good storyline.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Can't believe it has been about 10 or 11 years since first time I watched this movie. I decided to give it another go because I do like spider movies, and "Arachnid" is actually good enough entertainment, considering it is from 2001.The story is straight forward, if not quite simplistic, actually. Some kind of alien spacecraft crashed with a stealth-craft somewhere over the Guam jungle, unleashing some type of alien insectoid creature. A group of people venture into the jungle and stumble upon mutated spiders and insectoid creatures, creatures that stalk them and prey on their lives. So it becomes a matter of survival; man against mutated spiders.Sure the storyline is a little bit far fetched, but hey, we are dealing with huge, mutated space insects here, isn't that warning symbol number one? I found the story to be alright though, easy to follow and drops you right into the action immediately.The effects in "Arachnid" were actually quite alright. But of course, this is a Brian Yuzna movie, and he is known for his great creature features and monstrous designs. So even for a 2001 movie, "Arachnid" has creatures that look quite nice. Lots of details and fine touches, which I immensely enjoyed.The acting was adequate, although the characters were quite superficial and stereotypical. Most of them seemed to be devoid of any emotion or empathy, as people were dying left and right, and no one seemed to really be shaken or disturbed by that fact.Sure, there are better spider movies available, but "Arachnid" wasn't bad, and it is well worth a watch if you have nothing better to do.

Arachnid starts in Guam where a man from a nearby island has been taken seriously ill, he is covered in strange bite marks & eventually dies. Concerned about his death Dr. Samuel Leon (José Sancho) organises an expedition to the man's native island to try & discover the cause of his illness & death, American soldier Valentine (Chris Potter) is called in to lead the team while local pilot Lauren Mercer (Alex Reid) is hired to fly the team to the island. Approaching the island & the small plane loses power & Mercer barely manages to land it, the team are now stuck on the island with the plane out of action & decide to carry on with their research since they are there anyway. The team soon learn that a giant flesh eating alien mutated Spider is loose in the jungle & is trying to breed, the team must must stop it before the Spider or it's offspring reach the mainland & infect the entire Earth...This Spanish production was directed by Jack Sholder & is a fairly lacklustre 'Creature Feature' that has little to recommend it, Arachnid is the sort of low budget tripe that turns up on the Sy Fy Channel all the time. Spiders eh? Almost everyone hates them & more importantly are scared of them so the usually humble Spider is a good subject for a typical giant insect 'Creature Feature' since people don't like them to begin with. The cinematic wasteland is littered with giant/killer Spider films, from the big budget Arachnophobia (1990) to Arachnia (2003) & from the classic Tarantula (1955) to the not so classic but still fun Spiders (2000) & it's sequel Spiders II: Breeding Ground (2001) & the more recent big budget horror comedy Eight Legged Freaks (2002) which I personally really like with countless other obscure Spider inspired horror flicks between like Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) & Ice Spiders (2007) to name but two. Here with Arachnid the script offers nothing particularly new, memorable or stimulating as a giant alien mutated Spider threatens to destroy mankind & the efforts of the clichéd cast of character's to stop it. Arachnid is pretty poor for the majority of it's duration, at almost 90 odd minutes it feels longer although to be fair the pace isn't too bad but the premise is totally wasted with a lack of gore or action & some incredibly badly shot & edited sequences that were meant to be either scary or exciting but just end up annoying. The forgettable script feels like a mix of Predator (1987) & Arachnophobia as a bunch of paper thin character's are bumped of by mutant alien Spiders in a dense South American jungle, unfortunately it sounds a lot better than it actually is. Predictable with a loose plot that never ties things together that well I would find it hard to recommend Arachnid to anyone other than die hard creature feature fans.Arachnid isn't much to look at either, the jungle location is wasted with flat & boring photography that doesn't even try to take advantage of the naturally lush locations. The various special effects scenes are poorly shot & edited which sometimes makes it difficult to follow what's going on, there's no sense of scale & it's difficult to know where people or things are in relation to each other. It's far too dark too often, there's a lack of gore with only some blood coughing offering up some of the red stuff. There's a cool dream sequence in which a character's face distorts & splits open as the alien Spider's head bursts through but it's just a dream & a little pointless. The special effects are alright, there's no great usage of CGI computer effects & the alien Spider is mainly a real life sized rather stiff moving puppet but the makers are just ignoring one bad special effect & using another equally bad special effect in instead.With a supposed budget of about $570,000 this was really low budget & it show's with small scale effects & little in the way of ambition or imagination. Filmed in Barcelona in Spain & in Mexico. The acting isn't anything to shout about, minor British celebrity Alex Reid is terrible.Arachnid is a pretty poor creature feature, how can a film about giant mutated alien Spiders be bad? Arachnid is how. This could have been quite a fun little film, as it is Arachnid is forgettable Sy Fy Channel fare that has little going for it.

Arachnid opens with a cheesy alien ship crash in the middle of the jungle. (This thankfully is the only part in the movie to use CGI). Then alien spiders that must have been on the ship run off into the jungle after killing their alien pilot. Even though this beginning may make the movie look like another CGI horror movie, don't be fooled, all of the mutated/alien/ spiders are made from props and animatronics. And not only are they not CGI, but they look excellent too. This is what makes this movie so enjoyable. Through out the movie our heros explore the jungle while trying not to become monster munchies. Most of the acting is OK for a movie of this type. Not nearly as bad as some of the other movies made by Fantastic Factory. Overall I would recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of creature features, as well as gore hounds, (there are many good uses of gore in this film).

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.