Arachnophobia (1990)★★★★☆

(Spoiler warning, but also major content warning if you can’t deal with spiders or mentions thereof) Oh boy, THIS movie. This movie has haunted me since I first saw it probably more than 30 years ago. In fact, I’m pretty sure I had seen this even before my OWN scary spider incident…

When I was in second grade, my grandparents took me on vacation to Hawaii. If you think this is a story about tropical spiders, you’d be wrong. The trip itself was great, but when I came back to suburban Illinois, a spider had laid eggs in my bedroom and they HATCHED THE DAY I GOT HOME (as I remember it, the timing could be off). Hundreds of tiny baby spiders crawling all over my ceiling and walls. It took months before I was willing to sleep in that room again.

Did I realize these weren’t crazy deadly Venezuelan spiders? Sure, logically I did, but was my grade-school mind ready to react logically to this? Not even a little. For years, even decades afterwards, I’d have recurring nightmares about giant spiders, or wake up convinced a spider was dangling from the ceiling directly above my head.

These days? Well, the dreams have mostly stopped, and mostly I’m ok with spiders that respect the social contract and stay in ceiling corners and away from my face, my bathtub, my food…

But this movie still gets to me. It might be my favorite John Goodman performance ever. I love Jeff Daniels and find his portrayal of Dr. Ross Jennings super relatable here. And, well…it’s just a well-made movie! And if you can relate to the title at all, it ends up pretty terrifying for a PG-13 film.