Steven Spielberg had enough talent not only to become the most successful and the most influential director and producer of late 20th Century, but also to serve as mentor for his colleagues and inspire many other impressive careers. He tried to do the same with his long time producer Frank Marshall whose directorial debut, 1990 horror film Arachnophobia, is unmistakeably Spielbergian.
The plot begins in Venezuela where expedition led by entomologist Dr. James Atherton (played by Julian Sands) arrives to remote area that wasn’t ever visited by man and discovers new species of unusually large, deadly venomous and aggressive spiders. Jerry Manley (played by Mark L. Taylor), expedition’s photographer, gets bitten by one of those spiders and promptly dies, but his death is attributed to flu. His body is shipped in his home town of Canaima, California, together with the spider that killed him. This coincides with the arrival of Dr. Ross Jennings (played by Jeff Daniels), physician who, together with wife Molly (played by Harley Jane Kozak) and two children, came to Canaima from San Francisco, hoping to start practice and new life in quieter and less stressful environment. Dr. Jennings is unaware that the killer spider, who has left the casket, came to his barn and mated with local spiders, creating huge new batch of little spiders that inherited its aggressiveness and venom. Only when citizens start dying Dr. Jennings begins suspects that it is something very wrong. It takes a while before he realises that the spiders are causing death and that the source of infestation must be destroyed in order to stop their deadly rampage. To make things worse, he also suffers from arachnophobia – irrational fear of spiders. On the other hand, he receives help from Dr. Atherton’s assistant Chris Collins (played by Brian McNamara) and flamboyant local exterminator Delbert McClintock (played by John Goodman).
Marshall, who also received help by Spielberg as executive producer, did solid job as director of Arachnophobia. Film is well-paced, plot is easy to follow and the special effects are, like with all Spielberg’s films, at the highest quality. In case of this film they included use of specially handled real life spiders and animatronics handled by veteran Chris Walas; one of special effects workers was Jamie Hyneman, who would years later reach fame as host of popular Mythbusters television series. Cinematography by Mikael Salomon is solid, while composer Trevor Jones delivers serviceable, although not particularly memorable music score. However, technical skills can’t compensate for the main flaw of Arachnophobia - cliched script in which almost every plot development is predictable, especially in the finale during protagonist would have to conquer his own fears and face his eight-legged foe. Film, which was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Birds, suffers not only in comparison with that film, but also with Spielberg’s Jaws. Marshall tried to escape from them by trying inject as much humour as possible (and Arachnophobia was even advertised as “thrill-omedy”), but its quality is below par. While character actors are solid, Daniels in main role is bland, while John Goodman appears relatively late and isn’t used enough as comic relief. Arachnophobia is nevertheless solid piece of Spielbergian entertainment which combines elements of horror, very light comedy and celebration of family values in a way that show the best of PG-13 Hollywood.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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