I hate spiders. Whether in real life or on the big screen, they scare the hell out of me, and even just the thought of one crawling up my leg gives me chills. Because of this phobia, one of the scenes that scared me the most in the new horror movie. werewolf It does not involve the action of the werewolf or metamorphosis, but rather features a huge arachnid. And the only thing that makes the sequence weirder is the fact that the four-legged monster is 100 percent current.
When I interviewed co-writer and director Leigh Whannell earlier this month during the Los Angeles press day for werewolfI was forced to use some of my time to ask about the scary spider that appears in the movie. The Australian filmmaker told me that he was very familiar with the specific species and that the production had to fly it to the set because there were none in New Zealand. Whannell said,
Oh yes. That’s an Australian spider… We grew up with these spiders. They’re not actually in New Zealand; If you are one of those who fear bugs, you should immigrate to New Zealand as quickly as possible because they do not have snakes. We had to bring it from Australia to get a spider like that. And I can tell you that thing haunts my nightmares.
He werewolf The sequence highlighted here occurs in the second act of the film. Blake (played by Christopher Abbott) has begun to experience strange symptoms after being attacked by a canine humanoid in the woods, and is disturbed when he hears a strange, repetitive knock coming from the second floor of his childhood home. He slowly makes his way toward the source of the percussion and is eventually surprised to discover that what his ears have been picking up is the light tapping of a spider’s legs crawling along a wall.
It’s really the scariest way possible to discover that your senses are out of control.
Those of you reading this article and laughing at my blatant arachnophobia should know that I feel justified in sharing my fear because Leigh Whannell is part of the same special club. He admitted to me that he didn’t actually film the spider scene in werewolfsince his own fear of the little monster made him temporarily transfer the management functions to one of his collaborators:
When the spider guy came in with him, I wasn’t even in the room when they were filming the scene. I had Andy Canny, the editor, go in there. I’m not going near that thing. So yeah, that was definitely tough… And they run really fast. Those things, if you touch them, they run.
I hate being as afraid as I am of spiders, but it’s something that really fits with my love of the horror genre: movies allow me to engage with my fear and feel the adrenaline of fight or flight while being completely safe. If you are someone who shares this sensitivity and phobia, you can check out Leigh Whannell’s. werewolf in theaters everywhere now.
