SPIDERS ON A PLANE (UK, 2025) - MINI REVIEW

Have you had enough of these motherf**king Jagged Edge movies on your motherf**king streaming service yet?

Four young travelers embark on a holiday of a lifetime aboard a jumbo jet that is transporting some lethal cargo: genetically modified spiders set for the US army.

But in true disaster movie style, the spiders break loose from their wooden box, rapidly and without explanation begin to grow and multiply and cause havoc on a plane full of tourists.

As an Australian, I am supposed to love spiders because there are spiders here the size of houses - they would make the modified spiders in this movie look tiny in comparison. But believe it or not, I hate the creepy crawly bastards.

I watched this as a test of my mettle: could I survive a full-length spider movie. It’d had been almost two decades, since Eight Legged Freaks, that I’d seen a spider movie. And between that movie and Snakes On A Plane, it obvious what the inspiration was for this Jagged Edge mockbuster.

Yes, roll your eyes and let out an exasperated huff, this is from the same crew as Winnie The Pooh Blood and Honey and that horrible Peter Pan Neverland Nightmare movie. And while this movie isn’t that great, it’s not as bad as those films either.

Because, you see, there is actually a bit of fun to be had here. Once you look past all the obvious flaws like a ridiculous cast of characters including a main girl with daddy issues who just so happens to have a background flying planes - because you know that point is going to come in handy at the end of the film, right?

There’s also the obvious decommissioned Dutch jumbo jet sitting in a regional airport masquerading as a Columbian-bound passenger jet. It’s obviously past it’s prime but its still batting above it average. I like how the filmmakers have removed seat to make economy look like first class. And let’s not get started about the size of the toilets.

There’s also the ridiculous spiders. The obvious rubber puppets, to the barely animated CGI monsters that crawl over the movie’s extra before their either killed or do the killing. The monster spider actually looks pretty decent - I can’t work out if it’s a puppet as well, or fully CGI. And to be honest, I am not going to lose any sleep if I don’t know.

Before I tell you what I liked about the film, I just need someone to explain why a small wooden box was being used to transport deadly spiders? A wooden box with no compartments in it to store the spiders. Also, how the hell did they manage to multiply and grow so quickly? But again, I’m not going to lose any sleep not knowing the answer to that question.

However, the movie does something incredibly right. At about the 40-odd minute mark, it remembers it’s a silly Jagged Edge mockbuster and finally decides to ham itself up. It’s gets so incredibly goofy that it becomes riveting viewing. Riveting in the sense that it’s finally being the stupid movie it promised to be from the poster and trailer.

Suspension of disbelief is then needed as the survivors go from one downright stupid scenario to the next. It’s almost as if the filmmaker didn’t know what happened to all those United Airlines flights in the USA back in the 90s.

And then, when you think the movie couldn’t get any stupider, the final scene with one of the characters evolving into Spiderman is truly classic Jagged Edge cinema. This movie was never a pisstake of Spiders on a Plane or Eight Legged Freaks, rather it was a shocking ode to Marvel’s web slinging master.

GENRE Horror Action Adventure
DIRECTOR Ben J. Williams
STARRING Lauren Budd, Lila Lasso, Danielle Scott
ORIGINAL TITLE Spiders On A Plane
ALTERNATIVE TITLE N/A
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN UK
RELEASE DATE 31 May 2025