“Well, saw off my legs and call me stumpy. If you’re gonna have trespassers, this is the kind to have.”

Justin’s rating: I learned that there are times when it’s appropriate to knock down the door of a bathroom and drag a woman off the toilet. And those times are when an imminent spider attack requires an immediate evac without anyone washing their hands.

Justin’s review: Do you ever find yourself mumbling about how CGI’s ruined movies these days and that nobody respects practical effects any more? Well then, I’ve got a distracting trinket that will keep you mesmerized for at least 10 of its 86 minutes: Arachnia!

A throwback-styled creature feature, Arachnia embraces stop-motion and other practical effects to draw us into the world of giant spiders and the humans that they want to hug. It also really wants to be Army of Darkness, just with a lower budget, no Sam Raimi, and a knock-off Bruce Campbell stand-in.

As we draw back the curtains on this cinematic masterpiece, a plane carrying a pompous professor, two of the dumbest dinks ever posing as his harem, a beefy pilot, a no-nonsense assistant, and a human clown is brought down in the middle of the countryside. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s the same place that giant underground spiders have booked an Airbnb!

The gang crashes the cottage of ol’ geezer Moses, a guy who just so happens to have his own giant (dead) spider in the barn. This provides a cue for the jerk professor to go on a lecture as to why giant spiders couldn’t actually exist and function… right before the movie shows a bunch of them existing and functioning just fine, thank you very much.

Cue plus-sized arachnid siege and some unsupervised fun with shotguns and chainsaws. The crew also get some help from the military thanks to the one girl calling her colonel daddy and pretending that the professor is trying to assault her. It’s really the whole “would you steal a loaf of bread if you were starving” moral quandary all over again.

We probably need a label at this point for movies where the directors intentionally make bad films for the purpose of providing mock value. Trust me, it’s totally different than bad films from well-intentioned creators. You can tell by the “phony” feel. It’s trying to force a joke or style that it won’t earn legitimately.

That’s what Arachnia is. It’s a clear homage to creature features of yore, but instead of striving to do the genuine best with whatever resources were available, this team leaned hard into mimicking bad filmmaking. In a way, that makes this impervious to criticism, because they can always wave the “it’s tongue-in-cheek” card. That’s pretty much the entire strategy of Sharknado and the Syfy channel’s existence.

But unlike those examples, Arachnia doesn’t spray us with unbelievable CGI. Unbelievable claymation, yes, and it’s just different enough to inject some novelty. Is it enough? Nope. But I did like watching a stop-motion critter skitter about and go on a rampage.

I don’t suppose I should’ve expected excellence or even competence from the same studio that did Time Chasers and Icebreaker, but I kind of hoped that they would’ve tried a little more here.

Intermission!

• Enjoy the heavy metal version of the Doctor Who tunnel
• Shooting stars are bigger than planets, everyone knows that
• “No sir ma’am!”
• Being in a plane crash won’t kill you but it will make everyone fall asleep for a bit
• The professor’s occasional accent
• Deke never misses an opportunity to grope a girl
• Yes, take a swig from the mysterious unlabeled jug. You surely will not go blind.
• The girl confused about what kind of “tub” this is
• Survival priorities start with a hot bath and then… whatever
• When the pervert starts whimpering like a dog, extreme slapping is warranted
• “You can sleep in the damn barn. With that.” [turns off lights]
• And now the requisite pillow fight between the girls
• What is a “ladies picnic?”
• When you charge into a spider cave, don’t be surprised when you get a spider bite
• Spiders see in red
• Deke gets pulled in half by spiders and that’s STILL too good for him
• “You’re gonna be REAL useful.”
• Every old coot has a crate of cartoon-style dynamite in the barn
• Surprise frying pan smack!
• How long it takes any of them to call for help on their cellphones
• Chandra’s bizarre phone call: “It’s the only house in the middle of nowhere!”
• “Do you REALLY want them armed?”
• Binoculars work as well at night as you might expect
• Spiders like to eat lit dynamite?
• The spider running by while on fire got a chuckle from me
• Time for an alien chestburster
• Colonels have no problem calling in multiple attack helicopters and a full platoon of troops with rocket launchers to defend the honor of their daughters