The 12 Scariest Movie Spiders Ever

Spiders are disgusting. No matter their size, shape, or genre —sometimes they're tiny and realistic. Other times, they're large and anthropomorphic. Regardless of their type, spiders have been a fixture of genre cinema since its beginning. In 1957's "The Incredible Shrinking Man," the titular shrinking man (Grant Williams) battled a giant spider while adjusting to dime-sized life. Early roots of folktales and mythology abound with symbolic spiders. Arachne, a Greek weaver, defeated the Goddess Athena in a weaving contest, subsequently condemning herself to a life of eternal weaving as Athena transformed her into a spider. There are arachnid roots and depictions throughout history, most benevolent, though all deeply meaningful.

In contemporary canon, spiders have become more menacing, threatening, and squirm-in-your-chair disgusting. Likely rooted in the quotidian experience of arachnophobia, filmmakers have wasted no time exploiting the basest of fears to make their projects even more frightening. Most spiders are relatively harmless. Still, their legs, size, and capacity to hurt renders them distinctly terrifying. Here, we'll be looking at the 12 scariest movie spiders in film history, with endless apologies to the arachnophobes among us!

Stephen King fan Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile") made an unusual choice when he opted to adapt King's notoriously difficult novella "The Mist." With one of the most famously bleak movie endings in horror, "The Mist" has no shortage of monstrous beings emerging from the titular mist. There's an early bout with some tentacled thing, and in a standout set piece, the supermarket sanctuary falls under siege by flying bug-like creatures. Then, of course, there are the spiders.

In "The Mist," Thomas Jane's David Drayton and company venture into the strange fog to check an adjacent pharmacy for medical supplies. While the visit initially goes well, the group soon finds the building occupied by enormous prehistoric spiders. These arachnids aren't just vicious with their fangs, either. They can produce corrosive webs that slice through flesh, making their likely Xenomorph cousins proud of their acidic acumen. Overall, it's the movie's most gruesome beat and aptly exploits the innate fear of eight-legged menaces.

Chris Columbus' "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," an adaptation of J.K. Rowling's novel of the same name, was a gateway horror experience for an entire generation of kids. While Alfonso Cuarón depicted creepy Dementors, "Chamber of Secrets" might be a giant monster movie masquerading as a "Harry Potter" sequel. After all, the movie's main threat is a giant, Medusa-like basilisk. After being falsely accused of opening the chamber of secrets, Rubeus Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) faces imprisonment in Azkaban and tells Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Ron (Rupert Grint) to "follow the spiders" to save him. Reasonably, is the truth really that important?

Of course, Harry and Ron choose to meet Aragog (Julian Glover), a giant, sentient spider, in the Forbidden Forest. Aragog reveals Hagrid's innocence, recounting how Hagrid saved Aragog after he was accused years before of being the Chamber's monster. He now lives as an exile in the woods with his many children, who vow to protect Hagrid. But that same courtesy doesn't extend to Harry and Ron. While Aragog is kind enough to confirm Hagrid's innocence, he sends his offspring after Harry and Ron, urging them to devour the boys. Although they survive, it's a nightmarish scene and far scarier than anything the "Harry Potter" film franchise has ever done.

"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" has no shortage of terrifying monsters. There's the Witch-king of Angmar and the specters along the Paths of the Dead, but none are like Shelob. Shelob, per Tolkien's original novel, resides in Cirith Ungol, otherwise known as the path of the spider. Gollum (Andy Serkis), the tricky little former Hobbit, leads Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) into Shelob's lair en route to Mordor. Unbeknownst to either, Gollum intends Shelob to kill the duo, finally permitting him to have the titular ring to himself once and for all.

Shelob is a giant, demonic spider, who almost successfully derails Frodo's plan to destroy the one ring. But with a little deus-ex-Samwise Gamgee that Shelob is defeated. Though a brief beat within the extensive 201-minute (theatrical) runtime, Shelob makes an impact. Some scholars have identified the monstrous being as a rare instance of Tolkien's exploration of female sexuality and violence. Whether symbolic or literal, Shelob cultivated years of nightmares among young Middle Earth fans.

Just as the 1970s dabbled in ecological terror with its many tales of beast and man confronting one another in an ever-changing natural world order—one besieged with pesticides and environmental devastation—the 1950s' nuclear era exploited giant, larger-than-life beasties with its sundry tales of existentialism and the dangers of modern science. Jack Arnold of "Creature from the Black Lagoon" fame followed his masterpiece with a sterling slice of arachnophobic terror. In "Tarantula," a scientist (John Agar) developing a rapid-growth serum to combat world hunger accidentally injects their tarantula, dooming the spider to grow and grow and menace the local population.

With a poster that proudly declares, "Giant spider strikes! Crawling terror 100 feet high," there's no doubt that "Tarantula" is the big, bad, sensationally fun monster movie it posits itself to be. Arnold is nothing but a craftsman, and the matte effects used to suggest gigantism still hold up remarkably well. While it's not as creepy-crawly frightening as some of the smaller arachnids on this list, there's still something distinctly horrifying about a giant tarantula running amok.

Sadly, Disney's streaming service still hasn't made Jack Clayton's adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel available to watch digitally. However, it's a hallmark of a lost age of cinema — when films carried empathetic depths and were sensationally, urgently scary. No, spiders aren't a central feature of the film. "Something Wicked This Way Comes" is a meditation on aging, identity, and the splendors of youth. Still, they make a nasty, creepy appearance midway through its runtime.

In a change from the source material, young Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson) and Will Halloway (Vidal Peterson) are attacked by hundreds of spiders while preparing for bed. They're on the windows, pouring through the ceilings, and hiding in plain sight on a doorknob. Yes, they're all real. The change is a necessary departure from the book, whose scare is considerably harder to reproduce cinematically (it involves a hot air balloon). Spiders are more visceral and primal. While it might not have worked on the page, it encapsulates the distinct childhood terror of the source material remarkably well.

In recent years, Paul Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" has undergone a necessary critical reappraisal. After all, this is the man responsible for the likes of "RoboCop" and "Elle." There was something special within Verhoeven's adaptation of Robert Heinlein's source material, and it's a shame it took so long for others to recognize that.

A modern cult classic, "Starship Troopers" abounds in urgent satire and plenty of ooey-gooey arachnid action. While it might seem odd, it's become a franchise springboard in its own right, with several sequels and adaptations since Verhoeven's original. In the film, interstellar war is afoot as the United Citizen Federation, the collective world government, battles against an arachnid species in outer space after encountering them while colonizing the galaxy. While the attacks play for laughs, there is a genuine, meaty subtext beneath the splayed limbs and sprays of galactic gunfire. Also, it doesn't hurt that the arachnid species is incredibly well-designed. For as much fun as Verhoeven is having, they incite a chill as they intelligently scramble to protect their homeland.