ARACHNID
(2001)
Notes: Filmax. 1 hr. 35 min.
Valentine: Chris Potter
Mercer: Alex Reid
Dr. Leon: José Sancho
Suzanna: Neus Asensi
Capri: Ravil Isyanov
Reyes: Luis Lorenzo
Bear: Rocqueford Allen
Tow-Boy: Robert Gabriel Vicencio
Directed: Jack Sholder
Screenplay: Marc Sevi
Music: Francesc Gener
Producers: Julio Hernandez and Brian Yuzna
Executive Producer: Carlos Fernandez
Co-Producer: Sheri Bryant
Summary: A navy pilot in a jet encounters an odd oceanic phenomenon, ejects, and lands on a South Pacific island where he encounters smoke and an alien spectral thing. A giant spider attack him.
Pilot Lauren Mercer visits the hospital where Dr. Leon is trying to treat a toxic case from the island. She agrees to fly a medical expedition team led by ex-marine Valentine and including Dr. Leon, his assistant Suzanna, entomologist Henry Capri, Valentine's marine pal Bear. and others to the island. Capri believes people fear spiders because of subliminal recognition that they are the perfect predators. Spiders just want what we do. Mercer just wants to step on them. Leon's patient has died when they are about to embark. Valentine announces, "The more guns I have the safer I feel."
We learn that Mercer resigned as a commercial pilot and it's a big bloody mystery. Electrical failure forces them to crash land on the beach. Magnetic interference means no radio contact. Capri vacuums a spider specimen into a cannister but something odd and acidic drips on his hat. Machine-gun fire seems to scare off whatever was responsible in the bushes. Camping, snotting off, and further trekking follow.
One member of the party is attacked by ticks which get under his skin and migrate about. Mercer fall in a hole and is attacked but Valentine and Bear pull her out. Bear shoots down the hole. Spider silk seems to have gotten Mercer's and Valentine's shirts stuck together. Maybe the Japanese dug those holes: they're too large for a spider.
The tick guy is in bad shape. Capri sees a mutated cave spider out and about. The party reach the village they were to help medically, but it's practically empty. Mercer finds a trace of her lost brother -- the navy pilot we saw at the beginning of the film. The navy gave up looking for him but she hasn't. The tick guy coughs up something living and Bear shoots it. The guy is in convulsions, so Bear shoots him too. A tentacled hydra creature takes off a native guide. Something darts about so they all shoot the rafters, but this flying worm thing zips off. Capri notes that "If spiders were as big as cats, the human race would be finished." Valentine declares this the end of the expedition, but Mercer insists on staying to look for her brother. Valentine says he'll come back and help her if she agrees to help get the rest of these people off the island.
While Bear wades through a swamp and sees another guide get acid spit into his face from the shore, Capri finds a cathedral-like web and a dead but impressive mutated arachnid. A shadow appears above Capri.
The others find Mercer's brother's skeletal remains and then Capri, wrapped in a web and rattling factoids and being eaten from the insides for the eggs laid by the giant arachnid. Various reproduction attempts are resulting in offspring not perfectly adapted. Eventually Capri asks to be killed. The arachnid appears and guns don't work. Run away! Suzanna get tangled in a web and Dr. Leon is killed. Valentine, Mercer, and Suzanna find a building left over from the war. Valentine is attacked through the side of the building until Mercer shoots one of the eyes. She reads a spider book at night but the arachnid attacks again. The three hide in a back room, but Suzanna thinks the thing is gone and opens the door. She is taken. The other two find a trap door downwards into tunnels. Outside, Mercer dreams of her brother mutating into a giant spider. Bear and a guide meet up with Valentine and Mercer, but Mercer wants that thing dead before they go. In the tunnels, she and Bear find the cocoon, which seems to be breathing. She climbs to cut it down but before that's possible Bear is attacked. The guide spears the spider but it pursues Mercer. She runs and when she falls, the spider drops webbing on her. Valentine appears and shoots while the guide uses a blow dart. After a tug-of-war between Mercer and the spider, it falls and is impaled on a stalagmite. "I hate spiders," she spits. As the few remaining humans leave, we see another giant spider watching them from above.
Commentary: I suppose the creepiness of this movie comes from the freak-show quality of the mutations such as giant ticks beneath the skin and flying worm-things. But this feature also unfocuses the horror: anything can appear, so does this really have anything centrally to do with spiders? Besides, the initial implication is that the giant spider is an extraterrestrial phenomenon. That seems a cheesy pseudo-explanation too that is, in any event, dropped.