Arachnophobia

Arachnophobia uses the common fear of spiders to drive a horror movie where the monsters are all too real. The crisis begins when an aggressive Venezuelan spider studied by a driven entomologist (Julian Sands) stows away in a coffin and ends up on the little town of Canaima, California. These spiders are lethally poisonous and will leap out at their victims. Molly Jennings (Harley Jean Kozak), Dr. Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels) and their two children have moved there to start his medical practice and a quite small town life. When the killer spiders rapidly interbreed with local spiders, people begin to die, and Jennings identifies the cause as the spiders and sure enough, the nest is on his property. To make matters worse, he is pathologically afraid of spiders from a childhood trauma. He must save his family and his new town while confronting and mastering his own fears. Comic relief comes from the local exterminator (John Goodman) who, when technology fails, doesn't hestitate from stomping the things into goo. The climax is a tongue in cheek noble confrontation between the arachnophobic Dr. Jennings and the Queen of the Spiders.