Crawlers is a creature feature built around a familiar horror setup: a dangerous spider colony, an oversized queen and a succession of tenants who do not see the creatures coming. Its modern edge comes from its setting and targets, with much of the action taking place in a multi-occupancy building owned by an unscrupulous landlord, played by William Miller. Although the story is set in Los Angeles, the film was shot in Portugal.
The building’s tenants span different careers and income levels, and the film’s sense of who deserves the audience’s sympathy shapes who is most at risk. Finance workers and influencers are among the characters unlikely to inspire much concern, particularly when they look down on Serena, the building’s long-suffering supervisor. Played by Matilda Lutz, Serena is an aspiring musician who finds the first victim: a UCLA arachnology professor killed by an exotic spider that grows to enormous proportions.
The film’s middle section draws suspense from showing the spiders approach unsuspecting residents as they carry on with their routines. One sequence presents events from a spider’s perspective inside a bag of crisps Serena is eating. The story also finds room for comedy, including a joke about spiders coated in paint crawling behind an obnoxious content creator during a livestream.
Written by Jayson Rothwell and directed by Angel Gómez Hernández, Crawlers keeps to a traditional monster-movie structure while adding an anti-capitalist thread. Its landlord complains about a local council he calls “socialist” for making it harder to exploit tenants, giving the film’s giant-arachnid threat a pointedly contemporary backdrop.
Sources: The Guardian Film.