If you’re one who is thinking “Arachnoquake? That sounds stupid,” then congratulations on displaying wisdom well beyond your years. “Arachnoquake” is a movie that sounds good on page, but when you see it, there’s just so much to hate about it that you can’t even take it at face value as a movie intended on being so bad it’s good. The movie is painfully self-aware to the point where you almost expect a laugh track to follow the “gags” staged. Meanwhile the writer behind the film is well beyond in over his head providing a three pronged story that jumps from sub-plot to sub-plot without resolving either, all the while ripping off films like “Jeepers Creepers 2,” “Children of Men,” “Deep Blue Sea,” “The Mist,” and “Piranha.” There are so much plot elements staged that are never touched upon or resolved, you could list them all in a whole review.
The spiders here breathe fire, but for some reason the queen spider doesn’t. We learn in the final scenes that the spiders are conveniently telepathically linked to one another, a characteristic never even mentioned until it suits the climax, the spiders are explained to be blind and based around sound and yet our characters wail and stomp around terrain like it’s going out of style, and it’s hinted that the spiders have embedded themselves in human hosts, but there are barely any characters who are actually impregnated. And where do the spiders come from again? Are they prehistoric? A new breed? An amalgamation of breeds? Mutants? How did they get so big, again? How is breathing fire an evolutionary trait? What purpose does it serve in their habitat? What did they eat before the earthquake? How and why are there so many? If they need hosts to breed, how did they pro-create without hosts? What exactly were the spiders planning on doing with the world? Why did the spiders take to underground for their harvest yet the queen begins nesting out in the open between two skyscrapers in the middle of a major city?
Why was she spinning a web? Why didn’t the military call in fighter jets to bring her down with guided missiles or nukes? How did the military evacuate the city so quickly? Is there more than one queen? How far did this invasion go? As explained in the aforementioned paragraph, writer Paul A. Birkett presents an awfully ambitious film with a three pronged narrative that sets the spotlight on three separate groups of characters, all with their own dilemmas in the rising spider apocalypse. Ultimately it means three groups of characters I wanted to see die agonizing deaths. And the film delivers obnoxious characters with an almost sadistic zeal. Writer Birkett hops from scenario to scenario barely developing anyone in the groups and sets up key characters with painfully predictable fates. Bug Hall plays Paul, a lady killing slacker who is lectured by his father to pick up more responsibility. So what happens?
The apocalypse presents itself and Paul becomes a leader and must be trusted with human lives. Tracey Gold is a woman stuck with her children in the middle of the carnage who is reliant on an asthma pump. So what happens? She runs out of her medication and now the characters must figure out a way to get her breathing again. I could never figure out why, with the limited budget, Birkett didn’t just focus on one group of characters. Hell, I was more invested in Edward Furlong’s plight than everyone else’s. The notion of skimpy female baseball players fending off giant spiders could have made for a fun film. But sadly that’s hardly developed as well, since most of the girls on the bus spend their time bawling in corners as the spiders just go to town on the school bus.
In either case, “Arachnoquake” is filled with its lion share of bad dialogue, bad acting, uninteresting characters, and a screenplay that meanders in to so many directions it’s tough to keep up. And save for some gross spiders bursting from people’s skin, there’s a severe lack of gore to the film. “Arachnoquake” fails to even be guilty entertainment. It’s telling when through the entire film I kept trying to figure out if Edward Furlong is really old enough to be playing the dad of two teenage children. Is he really that old? Am I really that old? A film so self-aware it practically breaks the fourth wall and talks to you, “Arachnoquake” is a very disappointing giant spider film with a million sub-plots, neither of which are well written or well developed, along with a lack of pay off in the gore department. But hey, at least Olivia Hardt is fun to ogle.