I'd heard this was a horror comedy which perhaps put my expectations up a bit too high. It feels a little creepy and a lot cheesy, but by the end of the film this essentially becomes an action film. There is a full on battle of wits and agility between man and spider, which is as ridiculous as it sounds.

There are parts of this film that are a lot of fun, but I don't think the inconsistent tone helps. On top of that there are plenty of goofy characters and not much in the way of decent humour.

This is essentially one of those dramadies I'm always railing against, except that there is a bit of drama and a bit of fun. Normally my issue with dramadies is that they are not funny enough or dramatic enough, whereas Arachnophobia is just a bit inconsistent across these two tones.

Jeff Daniels is a good charismaric lead and this was very nearly a solid fun film. Perhaps the biggest problem is just that spiders aren't made sufficiently scary. Sure the idea is that the spiders are super deadly, but the film struggles to properly build up suspense in a way that could grip my attention and my imagination.