Customer Reviews

Arachnophobia

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Arachnophobia was fun but only just. I have never seen the movie but I heard a lot about it so I wanted to read the book to enjoy the story. The book was overwhelmingly childish and it made it seem cartoonish and laughable. I think that this is a rare case where someone should have had the idea and someone else should have written it as a full novel with good characterization and pacing. This would mean of course that two names would appear on the cover with one of those names not having nearly as much talent as the other, but the book would have been better and longer for it. I did enjoy it, but I felt like I was reading something by R. L. Stine or something. It didn't come close to living up to my expectations which, I will admit, were rather high because of the screams the film caused. It is worth reading but only because it is so short. I think it would be more worth reading if it were written by a writer and made into a book and not a stretched out short story.

Synopsis:
The noviization of the Speliberg film. A photagrafor is bitten by a mysterious new species of spider while exploring in South America. The photagrafor's body is then sent back to his home town with the spider in tow. Once there the spider mates with a common house spider and creates a whole nest of homicidal spiderlings.

Grade:C-

Review:
The movie was medocre at best and this is no diffrent. It reads like a third grade book report of the movie, and the plot makes little to no sense. The fact of the matter is tis is a 50 minute read that will leave you with a sickly sense of time wasted.

Recommendations: no one except maybe a 3rd grader that liked the movie.

Cost: I wouldn't spend more than 3 bucks on this book.

Spiders can really be quite useful.


Not when there are thousands thousands of really rather oversized specimens trying to kill you and everyone around you, however.

Or, standard sort of bug horror plot, one hundred percent.

With a tiny bit of comedy relief here and there.

If you really like spiders destroying humans, you certainly should get this one.

This is one of those books where, rather than the movie being based on the book, the book was based on the movie. Hence there is hardly any literary value to this book, the grammar is written on a 4th grade level, and it's not even scary (being in the horror genre, you'd expect a little more).

It's an alright read if you want to waste a little time, I read this as a kid during a period of 3 hours in boring car trip.

The only positive thing to say about this is, the eight pages of color pictures. You know Mimi Bobek from the Drew Carey Show? One page has a picture from the movie, you can see what she looks like without all that makeup on! It's also nice to see Jeff Daniels' frightened expression on his face on the second-to-last picture where he's going up the staircase running away from all the spiders. 1 star for Katherine Kinney's un-makeuped face and Jeff Daniels' legitimate fright of being around spiders.

But, again, if the color pictures are more amusing than the content of the story in ANY book, the book itself isn't worth buying. Go see the movie if it really matters that much.. ironically, even the movie wasn't all that good (shame on you for producing it, Spielberg!).