Crawlers (2026)

“Arachnotastic Fun”

Horror films that are all about large numbers of normal-sized spiders wreaking havoc seem to have become popular again. First we had EVIL DEAD BURN director Sébastien Vanicek’s INFESTED aka VERMINES (2023) set in a French apartment block, while earlier this year TRIANGLE director Chris Smith’s new film SPIDER ISLAND premiered at Frightfest. Close behind it on the festival circuit has been CRAWLERS, originally shot under the title ARACHNID and now getting a digital release from Signature Entertainment with a DVD release to follow.

A large bearded wildlife enthusiast with what looks like a special interest in spiders judging by the number of framed specimens he has on the walls of his flat comes home one day with a large blister on his back. He drops down dead and the blister bursts, yielding hundreds of tiny spiders that start to get very big very fast. Exactly what they are eating to achieve this growth is never explained, but then it’s not that kind of film.

Meanwhile live-in building manager Serena (Matilda Lutz) is having the usual day dealing with leaky pipes, a horrible boss, and apartment tenants who do nothing but complain. Then she discovers the dead body and the building is placed in lockdown (“like that COVID”) says one character. And so we have a motley assortment of characters who find themselves having to fight off an increasingly massive horde of deadly spiders while trying to escape the building.

It’s easy to see why CRAWLERS has been a festival hit as, compared with a lot of festival fare, it stands out as being very competently directed (by Angel Gómez Hernández) and displays a wicked sense of humour in its attempt to depict as many gross-out human-spider interactions as possible during its 80 minute running time. Despite the similarity of location it's not a remake of INFESTED and while it’s as light in gruesome tone as SPIDER ISLAND it’s rather better than that. 

        Mathilda Lutz makes for a personable lead and is making something of a name for herself in the genre with Coralie Fargeat’s 2017 REVENGE, MAGPIE and the RED SONJA remake. The CGI spiders are very CGI indeed but there wouldn’t have been any other way to tell the story. While it’s no SNAKES ON A PLANE, CRAWLERS is fun, has a number of entertaining characters and plenty of horrible spider stuff, plus for those who might be interested the climax features Mathilda Lutz having to don a PVC full body suit (plus mask) that she finds in the apartment of a dominatrix, which is likely a first for any 'when animals attack' movie.

CRAWLERS is out on Digital from Signature Entertainment on Monday 9th November 2026 and DVD on Monday 7th December 2026