6 Spider-Filled Horror Movies Creeping Into Your Psyche

Hairy, scary, and hungry; spiders are perfect bad guys for horror movies

It’s estimated that around 5% of the global population suffers from arachnophobia, a fear of spiders.

It’s apparently one of the top 10 phobias in the world even though fewer than 2% of spider species actually pose a risk to people. Does this make it an irrational fear? Doesn’t matter.

Whether you’re one of the 5% or not, if you don’t like spiders, you don’t like spiders.

Remember that feeling of walking through a spider web and how it sticks to your face and hair and hands? Maybe there’s one crawling under your door right now…

When it comes to spider-based horror movies, these are no itsy-bitsy spiders swirling down the drain when the rain comes.

Horror movie spiders are venomous and ravenous. Sometimes they’re huge or there’s a hell of a lot of them. Some are mutations and some come from outer space or prehistoric times.

Horror movie spiders all have one thing in common: they aren’t going down without a fight. A little bit of rain, or even an erupting volcano, is not stopping these guys.

Prepare to feel a prickle of discomfort as you watch these 6 horror movies involving spiders.

Arachnophobia (1990)

Arachnophobia is a comedy horror movie starring Jeff Daniels and John Goodman.

An entomologist in Venezuela captures specimens of a prehistoric spider species. When a photographer dies from a spider bite, his body is sent home to California…with the spider in the coffin with him.

The spider mates with a local house spider, which produces hundreds of offspring with their father’s lethal venom.

People start to die, including the old town doctor, and the new doctor suspects they are dying from spider venom. The doctor teams up with the original entomologist, an exterminator, and some others to try to deal with the deadly arachnids.

Arachnophobia (Amazon)

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

Kingdom of the Spiders is an action horror movie starring William Shatner.

A veterinarian investigates the mysterious deaths of several farm animals and discovers the town is in the way of migrating tarantulas who kill anything in their path.

He’s too late to stop them and takes refuge with some other townsfolk in a small motel.

Kingdom of the Spiders (Amazon)

Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

Eight Legged Freaks is an action comedy horror movie starring David Arquette.

A man returns to Arizona to reopen his father’s old mines. But toxic waste and chemicals have created an army of giant spiders.

He teams up with a handful of survivors to stop them.

Eight Legged Freaks (Amazon)

Lavalantula (2015)

Lavalantula is an action comedy horror movie starring Steve Guttenberg.

An earthquake hits Southern California releasing huge fire-spitting spiders onto the land.

Armed with only a shotgun, a washed-up movie star has to find his family and save the world before it’s too late.

Lavalantula (Amazon)

Spiders (2000)

Spiders is a sci-fi horror thriller movie.

An experiment on a NASA space shuttle goes wrong when a meteor shower causes the shuttle to crash back to Earth. The experiment involved genetically altering the DNA of a rare spider.

The sole survivor of the crash is impregnated and the spider hatches and starts to breed. The spiders grow bigger after each kill and Los Angeles is soon overrun with these giant killers.

Spiders (Amazon)

Arachnid (2001)

Arachnid is an action sci-fi horror movie.

A medical expedition plane crashes on a tropical island. They’re investigating an unknown virus that caused the death of a man who had strange bites on him.

They find the man’s village empty and are subsequently attacked by giant spiders and centipedes.

Arachnid (Amazon)