Arachnoquake

USA • 2012 • 86m •

• Directed by: Griff Furst. • Starring: Megan Adelle, Gralen Bryant Banks, Paul Boocock, Edward Furlong, Tiara Ashleigh, Tracey Gold, Bug Hall, Olivia Hardt, Grant James, Lucky Johnson, Earl Maddox, Skyy Moore, Damien Moses. • Music by: Andrew Morgan Smith.

After years of the oil company fracking, an earthquake ensues in New Orleans, unleashing giant subterranean, fire breathing, carnivorous spiders with an appetite for human eyeballs. 30 year old slacker tour bus driver, Paul, must lead his group to safety into the swamps of Louisiana when the bus (and town) is over run by the deadly arachnids. It is here it is discovered they can run across water as well, and the hive with the queen, as well.

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Trailer

2:14

Review:

Arachnoquake is set in New Orleans where Roy (Ethan Phillips) runs a sightseeing tour company for tourist's, annoyed at his layabout son Paul (Bug Hall) he decides to demote him to driving tourist's through the city on a bus. It's his first run of the day & the bus is almost empty but Paul soldiers on like a professional, however they soon notice that all is not right in New Orleans as a new species of Spider seem to infest the city. These Spider's lay egg's in people & breath fire as well, scary. Paul is appointed leader of the group since he was the tour-guide & takes it upon himself to save his customers but he also wants to warn his father & sister Petra (Olivia Hardt), Paul hopes this will impress his father. The army are called in to battle the Spider's so why Paul thinks he should save New Orleans on his own I don't know...

Edited & directed by Griff Furst who brought to the screen classics such as Universal Soldiers (2007), Wolvesbayne (2009), Lake Placid 3 (2010) & Swamp Shark (2011) it's genuinely hard to decide which of his films is the worst as none of them can be described as anything approaching good. As you might expect Arachnoquake is a disaster from start to finish, character's are idiotic, the plot is idiotic & the entire 85 minute run time is difficult to sit through. It really is awful, dialogue, character decision's, credibility & entertainment value are all well below par. The whole script is really dumb, from the lazy part where if the Queen Spider is killed all the other's will simply just die to the American military that consist of about five men who set-up their base of operations on a car park roof, the bit when Paul finds his assistant in bed with boils all over her face & her looking really ill yet leaving her & not calling an ambulance to the idea that these Spider's have never surfaced before yet when Paul enter's the tunnels they are about five foot under the surface & who was the genius that decided to give the Spider's the ability to breath fire? Also, was it the same genius who decided to have the huge house sized Spider water ski across a river at the end? It's a pretty funny scene actually. Giant Spider films are hardly original either especially considering this was made by the Sy Fy Channel who have also shown the likes of Ice Spiders (2007) & Camel Spiders (2011), did we need another terrible mutant monster Spider film? I am not sure that we did, the cinematic wasteland of creature features would hardly be worse off if Arachnoquake hadn't been made, would it?

Technically Arachnoquake is a mess as well, from the end when the giant Spider explodes yet does not damage the building it's between or leave any trace of itself to Paul firing at it with a shotgun from about a mile away to all sorts of other daft scenes & stupid plotting that just destroys any scares or suspense or tension the makers were trying to achieve. The CGI computer effects are not the worst I have seen in a SyFy Channel film but they are not far behind, they are adequate at best & lousy at worst. There's no blood or gore apart from a couple of exploding boil's on people's skin, none of the annoying character's get deservedly gruesome death's & the who film is very tame & forgettable. There's no sense of scale or destruction or panic here, New Orlean's as a city seems completely uninterested in the fact that it is being overrun by giant fire breathing Spider's.

Filmed in Louisiana the production values are rock bottom, Arachnoquake looks cheap because it was cheap. The acting is bad, the likes of Edward Furlong, Tracey Gold & Ethan Phillips obviously can't get any other work although Olivia Hardt is pretty to look at I suppose. I think those involved knew Arachnoquake was going to be rubbish & treated it accordingly.

Arachnoquake is rubbish, there really is no other way to describe it. It's not even good for a few laughs, I really do have to stop watching these SyFy Channel films. I would feel better for it. I think I would. OK, I know I would. Would I? Bugger it, I'll be there watching the next time a cheap nothing budget creature feature airs like always. One day one of them will be good, right?

Review by poolandrews from the Internet Movie Database.