“Please don’t be alarmed, but there’s probably a spider under your seat.” This opening crawl, which could have been ripped from any William Castle picture of the 50s or 60s, now adorns Crawlers, the latest film about eight-legged terrors to hit cinemas this spooky season. If the crawl served to startle you then there is probably plenty in Angel Gomez Hernandez’s sophomore feature to sufficiently unnerve. However, for those not paralysed at the sight of a spider, a cast of obnoxiously over-exaggerated caricatures may put your sympathies where they aren’t intended.
Upon returning from an animal spotting trip from Papau New Guinea, George (Chris Rodgers) finds himself at the mercy of an infected bite that leaves him ailing. Soon spiders are pouring from the cut and spreading rapidly through his apartment building of Paradiso Palms and wreaking havoc on some of the most irritating residents you will ever have the misfortune of encountering. These include Lance (Sam Lucas Smith), a tech expert with an objectified AI Girlfriend and a pet snake named Ronaldo, Bradley (Gregg Sulkin) who spray paints priceless artwork for sport and typical mean girl Tonya (Lex Salvador). They clash heads with the exasperated site manager Serena (Matilda Lutz) who is underpaid and bullied around by the landlord (William Miller) doing a level of exaggerated evil that even Robbie Rotten would say was exorbitant. As a result of too much work and not enough pay, the building is falling further and further into disrepair, giving the spiders ample conditions to swarm the hapless tenants.
While not as brutally irritating as the critter fodder influencers in September’s Spider Island, the characters in Crawlers certainly give them a run for their money. It would be fine to have many of the victims be obnoxious (characters you want to see gobbled are a horror cliche as old as time) if the principal heroes you should be rooting for were interesting. The problem is neither Serena, nor the younger Molly (Andrea Scott Mendez) with whom Serena bonds are given any proper backstory or depth to anchor their plight for survival, and the distinction of being the least irritating is not enough to make them rootable. The standout of the entire film and its saving grace from a character perspective is the enigmatic Lady Lash (Melina Matthews), a British dominatrix with a client locked in a chest in her flat. If the entire film was centered around her fighting critters it would have frankly been an absolute riot.
Though the film includes footage of Jack Arnold’s Tarantula (1955), it is actually much closer to Sebastian Vanicek’s Infested (2023), in which a French apartment building is overrun with reproducing spiders. While that film showed the increasing paranoia as an allegory for immigration and xenophobia, this leans more into the fear of a virus, which the residents initially think is the cause. You could make links to COVID lockdown paranoia here if you wanted to be generous. Ultimately however this is much more about the spiders, and pleasingly the scares do arrive. Dangling spiders in mouths and hiding in cups, crisp bags and shoes are all highlights of a film that has a good sense of how to make an audience wince. The scares are surface level only, but a mindless fright can be welcome. The film could have used a campier tone throughout to accommodate this mindlessness though, especially with a bonkers third act reveal that doesn’t pack a full punch since the film’s direction is far too self serious amid a silly and overcranked script. No film with BDSM spider fights should be played with so many serious scowls.
If you are looking for arachnid terror to satisfy your cravings there have been far worse films released in this subgenre, even this year. It isn’t so dumb as to insult your intelligence and is a functional work with good set-pieces – however, in the spirit of many a B-Movie, tune out any time a spider isn’t on screen and your enjoyment will drastically increase.
Crawlers is in UK cinemas now.
