‘Spider Island’: A Preachy Yet Entertaining Creature Feature [FrightFest Review]

Over two decades after he impressed horror fans with Creep, director Christopher Smith’s latest offering is Spider Island, which trades the dark and gloomy tunnels of the London Underground for a bright and tropical island. A group of obnoxious influencers is brought to the island by businessman David (Andy Nyman) so that they can make videos to promote his new resort. But the native arachnids clearly have other plans.

The plot takes a little while to get going, with a lot of time being dedicated to making us dislike the influencers by making them out to be assholes.  The film also clearly wants us to dislike David, so he is shown to be a cruel and ruthless opportunist who puts profit above all else, even the safety of his guests. We are also intruded to Claire (Rose Williams), who is determined to expose David and his ruthless antics at all costs. And Claire’s father, Curtis (Tim McInnerny), is a former actor who often quotes Shakespeare at inopportune times, leading to some amusingly awkward moments. However, the relatively slow buildup means that it takes a while for the monster movie elements of Spider Island to really kick-in, but at least you have plenty of stunning tropical scenery to enjoy before the spiders finally begin their rampage. Screenwriters David Quantick and Christopher Jolley clearly enjoyed poking fun at online influencers who make extreme amounts of wealth from low effort videos, making it hard to feel any sympathy when the spiders descend. 

The environmental message of Spider Island is abrupt and in-your-face, with Claire constantly spewing preachy environmental babble at every available opportunity. Although it is clearly important to respect and care for the world we live in, Spider Island seems to want to shoehorn this message to viewers instead of delivering it in a more subtle way. It also seems like Claire may or may not be starting a budding relationship with fellow environmentalist Ed (Justin Daniels Anene), a plot thread which never really goes anywhere. Williams clearly does her best with the material she was given, but Claire’s endless environmental speeches soon become tiresome. But at least Curtis delivers plenty of amusing lines about his former acting career to keep us entertained. He did audition for the role of the butler in , after all.