I guess the SyFy Channel thought they were on to something when they decided to make ARACHNOQUAKE, a combination of two of their preferred genres - the monster movie and the disaster flick. It's a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of movie, in which various characters are menaced by prehistoric underground spiders released thanks to some earthquake action. Oh, and said spiders can breathe fire...
Yep, it's as silly as it sounds, and the execution couldn't be cheesier. There are CGI spiders running galore and none of them are remotely convincing. Sadly, ARACHOQUAKE also fails to be fun for the most part. It tries and fails to incorporate influences from the Grindhouse-style opening to events and stylistics copied from PIRANHA 3D, but it just can't catch a break. The humour's dumb and the characters dumber, and you end up just waiting for things to finish.
There are a few past-it actors who've been rounded up to appear here, including TERMINATOR 2's Edward Furlong. Now, I know Furlong has aged quite badly over the years, but to be cast as the father of a teenage girl and husband of a 40-something wife is just ridiculous. None of the other cast members fare better, but you can hardly blame them when the characters are so thinly-drawn. Sadly, ARACHNOQUAKE is a film that fails as both a disaster AND a monster movie.
