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Parents' Guide to

Arachnophobia

By Charles Cassady Jr., Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 12+

Creepy/clever creature feature with touches of humor.

Movie PG-13 1990 103 minutes
Arachnophobia Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

  • Arachnophobia Movie: Scene #1
  • Arachnophobia Movie: Scene #2
  • Arachnophobia Movie: Scene #3
  • Arachnophobia Movie: Scene #4

Community Reviews

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age 12+

Based on 14 parent reviews

A.Guy
A.Guy Adult
October 2, 2020
age 13+

Good Film; Use Discretion

Better than I expected; worth watching even for adults. Pretty solid story line for this genre, as long as you haven't done too much research on spiders. Good message about facing fears, typical pg-13 language. This movie is intense and may have a unique effect on viewers since spiders are ubiquitous as opposed to the antagonists in other scary films. Pretty much ok for young teens in my opinion, but there is one shot that pans down a teenage girl's bare torso. It's zoomed in to avoid the really important parts, but it's still clear what you're looking at. Adults drink wine and punch. A grieving parent is drunk.

This title has:

Too much sex
2 people found this helpful.
Sarah M.
Sarah M. Parent of 8-year-old
January 15, 2023
age 7+

Great movie too much violence in the spiders bite. People ending is great. I’m not gonna spoil it though 10+

This title has:

Great role models
Too much violence
See all 14 parent reviews

What's the Story?

On a scientific expedition in the jungles of Venezuela, a luckless young photographer is fatally bitten by a nasty, fist-sized spider, unknown to modern science, dwelling in the rainforest canopy. When the dead man's body is shipped back to his small Californian hometown, the spider goes with it, mates with a common North American spider, and ends up siring a whole colony of killer arachnids, centered in the barn of a newly arrived family in town headed by young Dr. Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels). Soon townsfolk around Dr. Jennings start mysteriously dropping dead -- felled by the venom of the growing army of spiders. As Dr. Jennings searches frantically for a cause, a major complication is that he happens to have longstanding arachnophobia, a crippling fear of spiders.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (14 ):
Kids say (30 ):

Hailing from Steven Spielberg's production company, with a touch of the Gremlins vibe of little monsters doing big damage, ARACHNOPHOBIA is an undeniably fun ride. It actually plays on a number of fears, spiders being only the most obvious and marketable to the thrill-hungry audience. For grownups there's the additional angst of the phobic hero (a very nice everyman role for Jeff Daniels), a transplant from the big city who finds his new job opportunity evaporating, his new house purchase a wreck, and his new neighbors turning against him. That's a very Hitchcockian touch, and a lot of critics did compare Arachnophobia to The Birds, though this movie is much more comical in its characterizations and mayhem.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about spiders in real life, including the bird-eating spiders of the tropics (that obviously inspired the fictional species here). Why are spiders so creepy? Ask children if they fear spiders or can tolerate them.

  • For responsible opposing viewpoints, study up on the beneficial aspects of spiders, or read pro-spider storybooks such as Charlotte's Web.

  • Discuss how this movie doesn't go the giant-mutant-bug route of sci-fi thrillers like Tarantula and Eight Legged Freaks; spiders here are realistically sized. Talk about the "inverse square law," a scientific truth oft violated by Hollywood, in which the larger an animal is, the heavier its supporting anatomy has to be. Therefore invertebrates like the ones in giant-insect flicks would be squashed by their own massive exoskeletons.

Movie Details

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