Arachnid - 2001

What are SyFy original movies if not the old black and white B movies like Ed Wood, et all?  These are the modern version of that.  Of course now we don't have B movies.  "B movie" famously refers to when movies would play double features.  There was the one that people wanted to see, and the one that was tacked on that people essentially got for free.  The second features were the "B" movies meaning they came after the "A" movies.  Once this was no longer common occurrence, the phrase stuck around and now we apply it to a whole lotta stuff.  Its a badge of pride, like so much else, and it's a whole niche, genre, and more.

The essence of these movies is that they're bad.  Yes, you can in fact pride yourself on being bad.  If only that worked in the workplace?  Anyways, these movies tell us that they might not have what you want.... they don't have the actors, the effects, the reasoning and the motive, they do have some action, and they might have some entertainment value though.  But they tell us, straight forward, that they're second rate.  Why is this?  Why is that we're not only allowed to put out second rate material, but we're proud of it?  Perhaps its the same reason McDonald's exists.  No one is going to "go to bat" for McDonald's and support it.  But yet, it's fuckin popular as ever in health conscious 2016.

Did I mention that I accurately guessed the year of this film?  This is the shit that passed for TV entertainment in 2001.  This is the type of movie that eventually begs you to look away from it.  I'm writing this review while I watch it (drunk).  It has no uplifting qualities and it exists only to fill 2 hours on a channel no one watches.  Did this movie break even?  Does this movie exist on DVD with special features?  Are people besides me watching this now in 2016 for the first time and reviewing it, and more importantly will they be reviewing in in 2031, 2067, and 2190?  At what point will this film never be seen again?  I always wonder these types of things.  Take a classic.  Godfather.  Alien.  When is the last time anyone will ever watch that?  It will happen.  Eventually.

What is the part of the human psyche that wants to turn it's mind off?  What's that all about?  We are gifted with an extraordinary thing, the mind, and yet we squander it on SyFy movies and reality TV?  How the fuck does that make sense.  I hate, out of general principal, 90% of the traits of humanity.  Why is it that humanity likes these completely meaningless and destructive things?  We value them?  I own a 50 movie Sci Fi Invasion boxset, and at the risk of fucking up my search for those keywords later, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME?????

Why do I cherish absolute trash and then rate is 5 stars?  Am I, as a critic and a human, missing something?  Or is everyone else?  What is wrong with the species that is mankind that makes these things happen?

Arachnid is part of the problem vs. part of the solution.  I refer to my above paragraphs here.  It revels in its badness and says, hey, accept me.  Why?  Because it's aware it's bad?  Is that good?  Are we now accepting badness as long as someone is aware that it's bad?  But then again, are they aware?  Was Brian Yuzna, one of my favorites, aware of this movie's terrible attraction?  Also, what quantifies it's badness?

The effects are decent.  The location is cool.  The pacing is adequate.  Where this movie fails is the script, acting, cinematography, repetitive nature, and inherent inability to entertain.  And I swear to god if I hear the last name Mercer one more time I might kill someone.

Jungle.  Perpetual midday or night.  Group of rough and tumble GIs that are thrown in, and you struggle to remember their names as they struggle to remain alive.  There's giants spiders on the loose, see, and scientist whats-his-face is gonna figure them out just in time to save the only two characters that matter, while in the meantime the fat will be trimmed in the way of spiders biting people.  Yep, SyFy territory right here.

One thing I will give this, as I said before is that the effects are cool.  Yuzna had effects filled projects and frankly this does not fall short.  There is a particularly memorable dream sequence with the spiders and a girl's missing brother.

But who am I kidding.  This is not a review.  Introspection aside, this movie was chalk full of awful.  It was bland piled with a nut topping and a glass flavored sauce on top.  It was the video equivalent to a Tuesday where we go to work, nothing special happens but it's not the worst ever, and then you come home, eat leftovers for dinner, and go to bed early.  It was dull, and frankly un-challenging in any way.  I'm not taking a colossal dump on this film, I'm just saying that there is no reason for it to exist in the first place.  In an existence made up of artworks both gorgeous and overpowering, in a world where humankind has walked on the moon and can talk with the click of a button, there was never a need for Arachnid to exist.

I just came up with an awesome idea:  have Buzz Aldrin be part of a review show.  Cause you could literally have him judge movies based on his experience of walking on the moon.  "So Buzz Aldrin, how does Arachnid compare with walking on the moon?"  I can just see it now.  I feel like he'd give this no stars, but I'll give it one for decent effects.