When it comes to horror, creature features, or anything involving the spooky, supernatural, or scary in any form, you can generally rely on fans to hold the project in question in much higher regards than the critics do. It makes complete sense when you consider the target audience, but the opposite is inexplicably true when it comes to 1990 cult classic Arachnophobia.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the feature-length directorial debut of legendary producer Frank Marshall holds a Certified Fresh score of 93 percent from 44 reviews, which sounds fair enough when you consider its status. However, over 100,000 user ratings have chipped away at any chance of scoring high marks, leaving Arachnophobia on an egregiously average 54 percent.
Based on the love and adulation being thrown the film’s way on a Reddit thread responding to a deep dive interview Marshall recently gave reflecting on its legacy, we can infer that none of the comments or replies come from any of the six-figured masses who decreed that the eight-legged favorite was nowhere near as good as the critical sphere deemed it to be.
It’s not the first time in the recent past that Arachnophobia has found itself being put onto a pedestal, and you can be sure it won’t be the last, either. Everything from the casting to the score via the effects and the overall tone that deftly balances absurdity with abject terror is pitched to near-perfection, yielding what has to be deemed as one of Hollywood’s finest B-movies produced on an A-list budget.
There’s a remake on the way, but even the presence of James Wan’s Atomic Monster has us skeptical it’ll hold a candle to the original.