Review of Arachnid

Introduction

Set in the South Pacific in a region called Guam, Arachnid places a mixed expedition of people in an investigation into a viral outbreak. We are introduced to a pilot of a stealth plane which was tailing a partially visable U.F.O. who ejected out when the situation got `hairy` after his plane systems malfunctioned once he got too close. Within the assembled group the charcters are varied, Mercer is the `Lara Croft` type heroine, Valentine who was previously in the Army corp acts more like an adventurer similar to Brenden Fraser in "The Mummy" but doesn`t run the show, there is a Doctor, a Scientist (whose authority on spiders is very annoying, hope he dies!!) and a lot of expendible actors who were along for the ride and were basically spider bait. In some ways this low budget movie takes it`s ideas from other adventure and creature feature hits based on the given scenes and locations and the dresscode of the characters, examples would be the likes of "Predator", "Jurassic Park", "The Fly" etc.

Video

Although a low budget movie, the DVD was in anamorphic 1.78:1 and was an excellent transfer with no apparent dropouts. There are many night scenes which emphasise the boldness of the blacks but were still detailed none the less. The picture is clean and crisp, the colours are vibrant within the forest scenes and does show the detail up well. Camera work was done well with a few of the scenes which featured the suns rays gleaming through the trees and foilage giving a haze to the shots. The special effects surrounding the giant spider itself are similar to 1980`s technology and the queen alien featured in "Aliens" a very mechanical and puppeteered prop to say the least and would have worked better if less of it was visable. A bluescreen effect was used when the stealth plane was in flight and at certain angles did look added. During one grizzly scene Reyes(`The Edge` lookalike) goes through a most exaggerated death sequence and painfully overacts as he chokes and coughs up creatures which have gestated inside him, they also find other crevices to crawl out of. It`s a non digital effect which looks good enough but does make you grin at his demise, a squirt of blood off screen ends his career we hope!! Nice!! The arachnid lair and other underground scenes had a very `polystyrene` look and was too manufactured looking to be real, the sets seemed `dry` there was no moisture around to give it a realistic look as if something lived there, it was probably knocked up by Handy Andy! There also featured lots of gratuitus cleavage amongst the foilage.

Audio

The DVD was mastered in Dolby Digital 2.0 although upmixing to Dolby Pro Logic makes an improvement on the audio environment. The stealth plane gave off a few rear speaker and sub effects during flight, the ambience within the jungle was quite constant and also effective it seemed to give that dense feeling to the surroundings. The dialogue was debatable sometimes clear and other times there was an indistinct centre channel, the lip sync seemed out on certain characters at times too. The music score to the movie was quite good and fitted well to the theme made up of sinister creepy parts, build ups and lengthly suspense notes. Some of the score features a lot of `congo` sub and bass which gives a "Jurassic Park" touch but without the huge gates to go through! The music demonstrates drama well when the group enter the web in the jungle, an array of wooden xylophones and congo type drums are played around with at pace.

Features

The menu is a static background with no animations present, a spider silhouette is over a pale green circle overlayed on a grey filtered piece of jungle. Choices given are basic, ambient and insect effects can be heard over a rumbling sub. The features are minimal with a trailer, photo gallery of movie shots and production notes which has been broken down into topics.

Conclusion

The pace of the movie was slow especially within the first 45 minutes, even during what action scenes the movie offered it still lacked drama and wasn`t gripping. The acting of the cast was very `wooden` and didn`t stand out enough, they all seemed to have the same equal characteristics although variety was used casting them. Each character had no depth and no insight was given to their make up. Basically the `cheese` came thick and fast in this movie and there was more than a Welsh rarebit, it was funny in parts when it shouldn`t have been and over the top in other scenes, like for example the ditching of the light aircraft no one was buckled in and they all survive the crash without a scratch or mark, good pilot? Or were they just holding on to each other with tight fingernails? This movie ran for 92 minutes and mercifully not too long, a good `Channel 5` movie which would be best aired after 23:00, but if it is spider movies you are after check out "Arachnophobia" first as it could be better.