I hate spiders. Be it in real life or up on the big screen, they freak the hell out of me, and even merely thinking about one crawling up my leg sends shivers down my spine. Because of this phobia, one of the scenes that scared me the most in the new horror movie Wolf Man doesn’t involve the lycanthrope action or metamorphosis, but instead features an enormous arachnid. And only making the sequence freakier is the fact that the four-legged monster is 100 percent real.
When I interviewed co-writer/director Leigh Whannell earlier this month during the Los Angeles press day for Wolf Man, I was compelled to use part of my time to ask about the terrifying spider featured in the film. The Australian filmmaker told me that he was well familiar with the particular species, and that the production actually had to have it flown to set because there weren’t any in New Zealand. Said Whannell,
Oh yeah. That's an Australian spider... We grew up with these spiders. They're actually not in New Zealand; if you're someone who's afraid of creepy crawlies, you need to emigrate to New Zealand as quickly as possible because they don't have snakes. We had to bring it over from Australia to get a spider like that. And I can tell you that thing haunts my nightmares.
The Wolf Man sequence being highlighted here occurs in the second act of the film. Blake (played by Christopher Abbott) has begun experiencing strange symptoms after being attacked by a canine humanoid in the woods, and he is perturbed when he hears a strange, repetitive banging sound coming from the second floor of his childhood home. He slowly makes his way toward the source of the percussion, and he is ultimately shocked to discover that what his ears have been picking up is the light rapping of spider legs crawling along a wall.
It’s really the most terrifying possible way to discover that your senses are going out of control.
Those of you who are reading this article and snickering 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 shoot the spider scene in Wolf Man, as his own fear of the tiny monster saw him temporarily hand off directorial duties to one of his collaborators:
When the spider handler came in with it, I wouldn't even be in the room when they were shooting the scene. I had Andy Canny, the editor, go in there. I'm not getting near that thing. So yeah, that was definitely rough... And they run really fast. Those things, if you poke at them, they run.
I hate being as scared of spiders as I am – but it is something that does effectively gel with my love of the horror genre: movies allow me to engage with my fear and get the fight-or-flight adrenaline rush while being totally safe. If you’re someone who shares this sensibility and phobia, you can check out Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man in theaters everywhere now.
