Crawlers

Deadly animal films tend to arrive in clusters, and with this little charmer following hot on the heels of Infested and Spider Island, it’s clear that arachnids are currently on the ascendant. Indeed, as this film points out right at the start, there are three million of them for every single human on this planet. One might reasonably assume that they make up the larger part of its audience.

Merciless towards archnophobes from the outset, this is a film that does its utmost to pack in every day to day scary spider trope, from critters crawling up noses and into open mouths to them dropping unseen into popcorn and sneaking into shoes. Though one is obliged to assume that they are suicide attackers, they seem ruthless in their drive to eliminate their human foes. Perhaps they are inspired by revenge, given that their frst victim has a collection of dead spiders pinned to a board in his apartment. Whatever the reason, they seem to have the advantage, and what’s more, they find allies in capitalism and government bureaucracy alike.

As the film begins, amateur entomologist George (Chris Rogers) is stumbling back from the airport to the apartment building where he lives. He looks rather the worse for wear, and has a nasty wound on his left shoulder. You can guess what happens next. By the time the neon-splashed credits have finished rolling, spiders have made their way through every air duct in the building, and they’re growing fast.

As the superintendentof the building, it’s Serena (Matilda Lutz) who will have to deal with all this, and unusually for someone in her line of work, she’s already an arachnophobe. She’s the person everybody complains to about the generally poor condition of the building, with its dodgy air conditioning and leaking pipes, whilst the smarmy moustacioed landlord avoids his tenants and announces yet another rent increase. Her only allies are the father of a newborn, who goes to her apartment to smoke, and the dominatrix down the hall, who listens to her problems and gently tries to coax her into taking a more assertive stance.

We get a brief tour of other apartments early on – enough to invite speculation as to the order in which people will die (though it screened at Frightfest, this is very much a film designed for drunken nights in with friends). Will it be the influencer who fires neon-hued paintballs at works of art? Will it be the guy with the virtual girlfriend and the pet snake called Reynaldo? What about the woman preparing to Netflix and chill who pays zero attention to what’s happening around her? Then there is the young teenager with a cast on her leg, sulking about being left alone by a mother who has to go to Vegas to work. Serena promises to look in on her, a commitment which will become far more arduous than she ever anticipated.

Crawlers teases its audience. There are a lot of near misses – but once it begins, the carnage is non-stop. With the first deal interpreted as a possible sign of epidemic infection, the building is placed under lockdown. Later, it is announced that it will be flooded with poison gas on a set timer, so those trying to escape only have so long to do it in. Oh, and there’s an anti-spider glue gun device with tortuous effect on anybody who inadvertently touches its deposits. All of this is very silly and unrealistic, but so are most spider invasion scenarios, and it helps to guarantee some frantic action. It’s what happens when Serena goes looking throughthe dominatrix’s gear for solutions to her problems that the film is most likely to be remembered for, however.

Far from original but generally entertaining, the film features some cute moments of spidervision and packs a playful yet deliciously dark final twist. It’s a monster movie by the numbers and yet its creators have a good understanding of how to give viewers what they really don’t want. If the monsters of your nightmares are small and many-limbed, it’s guaranteed to deliver a shiver.

Reviewed on: 01 Nov 2026