Review: CRAWLERS is a Creepy Arachnophobic Survival Thriller

Did I miss when a law was enacted that requires at least one new scary spider movie set in an apartment building every Halloween? Infested, Sting, now Crawlers—which might as well be an American Infested remake. I Can't Believe It's Not Infested?, since it's the Lite version? I kid, but only slightly so. Angel Gómez Hernández's arachnophobic invasion flick gives SYFY Original vibes (in the complimentary way), like Mike Mendez's Big Ass Spider! Crawlers leans on digital creature creation and aims for goofy-gruesome fun, but don't expect the next Eight Legged Freaks—smaller scale, smaller thrills.

Matilda Lutz stars as Serena, the super of Paradiso Palms Apartments, your typical fixer-upper building that always needs fixing up. When one of Serena's tenants is found dead after traveling abroad, the Infectious Disease Center issues a quarantine protocol. Agents suspect it's a dangerous virus, but no one's ready for the real culprit: venomous spiders. Little did the jungle tourist know he was incubating arachnid babies that hatch from a back wound and inhabit Paradiso’s air ducts, growing larger. That means Serena and her neighbors are now locked inside with nasty lil' killing machines, in desperate need of an exit strategy.

If you can stomach computer-generated spiders over practical models (or the real thing), you're in luck. Crawlers designs its scurrying threats exclusively (or almost exclusively) through visual effects. They're a pitch-black species, resembling Black Widow figures but beefier, and they sell well in close-ups when tank-sized alphas bolt into frame. The hierarchy is exciting, with leaders unleashing baby-sized minions like miniature foot soldiers, though the animation gets worse when Hernández unleashes hordes of minis. One sequence where countless creepy-crawlies pile atop one another like a living ladder looks the worst, as the wriggling mass can't distinguish each outline. Otherwise, it's a rare win for independent-level VFX doing most of the heavy lifting.

Impressively, Crawlers is more than just the stock spider-horror scares of eight-leggers hiding in your slippers or gaining bodily entry through your mouth. Gregg Sulkin plays an art influencer who shoots paintballs at a massive canvas under blacklights, and what happens after he tags a few spiders is such a rad idea. The story also features gnarly corpse prosthetics as characters meet gruesome fates, whether from spider bites or, say, Chekhov's mirror shards waiting at the bottom of a trash chute. But what's best is the film's appreciation of dominatrixes and BDSM culture, which plays heavily into screenwriter Jayson Rothwell’s third act. Any filmmaker who gives the shot-slugging, fire-happy, charming goth dommy a hero role is aces in my book—and who knew latex bodysuits could be lifesavers?

That said, Crawlers falls into the generics that keep it from ever sniffing Infested's highs. William Miller's upper-crust landlord, Mr. Rossmore, is one of those seedy property owners we hate on sight, yet his unquenchable greed is too cartoonishly on-the-nose. Two other characters get stuck in an elevator and practically beg to die because of their own stupidity. It's a grab-bag of horrific scenarios that hit and miss with equal ratios, at least written thinly enough to focus on arach-attack action—which is only a benefit when a sequence hits its mark.

Crawlers is a pulpy after-midnight delight that'll crawl under your skin, as I'm sure a billion other writers will quip. What elevates this recycled setup are the details: supercharged IDC spider-goo guns, bondage whips as weapons, and colored emergency lights that bring appealing reds, blues, and other crayon-box filters to webbed-over corridors. Cinematographer Pablo Rosso is familiar with apartment buildings given his work on the [REC] franchise, and accentuates the claustrophobic residential prison now teeming with you-know-whats. Matilda Lutz is the secret ingredient, fighting back against her predicament with that same fire in her belly that helped her survive Revenge. Simply, Hernández doesn't waste the talent he's been given; Crawlers is safe to add to your Halloween watch list.

Movie Score: 3/5