ARACHNOPHOBIA

My two favourite genres are family films and horror and Arachnophobia mashes the two brilliantly, making for my ultimate favourite grand-genre! It is also a creature feature and they are rarely this good. Arachnophobia is a near perfect movie. With a mere PG rating it evokes absolute terror in its viewer and knows precisely which strings to pull. Every mark is hit with precision and Frank Marshall has teamed up with Steven Spielberg to create a suspense-riddled fright-flick with 100% impact. Oh, and its funny too. If you've never seen it then a quick summary... a new species of deadly tarantula-like spider hitches it's way from Venezuela to small-town America where it mates with a common house spider and produces thousands of offspring, which infest the township. The film's plot revolves around a series of clever and creepy death sequences which make the toughest skin crawl. To an Aussie audience there's the added creep out factor with the spiders used in the film being Avondale spiders, i.e. HUNTSMAN spiders. To my international friends, these are VERY common house spiders down here. I vividly remember seeing Arachnophobia for the first time at the old Montmorency cinemas when I was 12. I have seen it countless times since and it gets better every time. So much fun and a perfect movie imo.

---