Editorials
It’s Time for Spiders to Make a Comeback in the ‘Resident Evil’ Series
It’s that time of year where the sun is out, those who have a garden have a project to plant some flowers, maybe build a Tiki Bar, or just to sit outside and play classic animalistic fighter Bloody Roar on a PS Vita.
But for me, there’s also this other, more unpleasant aspect to garden life. Spiders are around, waiting to surprise me as I may stumble into a web stretching across the washing line. Even indoors is no safe haven, as I could be greeted with one in the shower.
A year ago I had written a piece on my fear of spiders, and since it was published, I’ve had a lot of replies to it.
Resident Evil 3 was one of the games in that article that brought the fear on with its scuttling monster arachnids, and now that the remake has come out without a spider in sight, I wanted to explain why they should now come back to the Resident Evil franchise, after a decade-long absence.
Survival-Horror was defined by Resident Evil in 1996, and it wasn’t just the jump-scares or the fear of running out of ammo that cemented its place in history; it was the monsters. Some were freakish monstrosities created in a lab, and then there were disturbing super-size variations of regular animals, from moths to snakes, and of course… spiders. My fear was, and still is, found in the classic entries, but there’s a whole other generation of Resident Evil games that have avoided eight-legged freaks – and that’s been both a relief and a disappointment to me.
I remember watching a friend play the original Resident Evil back on the Saturn. Even though the graphics were more basic, the movement was still creepy to me. The original Resident Evil had a remake way back in 2002 on the GameCube that made the crawlies even creepier. In fact, when I decided to give it a spin on Steam for this piece, you, dear reader, can enjoy the fact that when they appeared, I couldn’t have felt more uncomfortable. I had my partner try to finish the section for me, even though she had never heard of a Resident Evil game.
But I came to appreciate just how good they did look. They made the spiders from the clock tower-section of Resident Evil 3 look like joke-shop toys. They crawled and attacked in a more unnervingly realistic manner, and the sounds as well made them even more terrifying. In Resident Evil 0, they mercifully only make a small appearance at the basement entrance to the facility, halfway-through the game.
Resident Evil Code: Veronica, a game that’s begging to be remade, even if Resident Evil 4 is next in line, had its own spin on the oversized arachnid gimmick. A large spindly Black Widow spider makes an appearance in the Antarctica section, alongside its smaller brethren in a couple of rooms in both Claire’s and Chris’ scenarios. Still terrifying, but thankfully they were limited to such a small section. Playing these games for the first time and not knowing if I’d face my fear once again was always an unpleasant, yet thrilling sensation.
When I spotted on Twitter and Reddit that last year’s article was being shared, I discovered there are searches from people who simply ask others if there are any spiders in an entry before they start. I find solace in the fact that it’s not just me, and instead of them looking at wiki’s and asking friends, they seek out like-minded tortured souls to find the answers.
Soon after my article being published early last year, Capcom pushed out an update to Resident Evil 2 that saw spider-webs appear in the sewer sections, further raising the dread/anticipation that they were now appearing in the game as some form as a post-launch surprise. Or perhaps they were hints to the yet-to-be-announced Resident Evil 3.
But alas (with some relief), it was a red herring.
Early previews of the Resident Evil 3 reimagining had said that spiders were definitely around, but after my review and subsequent plays of it, I can confidently say there definitely aren’t any. The confusion could be linked to the Demio enemies that do walk on the walls and appear more spider-like, but they seem more like mutant ants (or, as described on Wiki, flea-like parasites), and much further away than their original appearances as pale-green Lickers. All the same, spiders were one of the many things omitted in the reimagined Resi 3.
But now that we are back in the limbo between new releases in the series until at least next year, it makes me wonder whether it’s now time to have spiders come back in some form. Granted, the power of the RE Engine could make them seem even more realistic and even more terrifying, but that’s not the only reason to do it.
What made the remakes so fun to play, specifically RE2, was the paranoia of what could be round the corner; what could be following you, and the foreshadowing of what could be facing you next. With the remake of Resident Evil 4 well-underway, it would be a great twist to see arachnids in the cave sections a third of the way through the game, to raise that paranoia, and bring something unexpected and unsettling to a well-known game.
I’m not saying to change it for the sake of it, but rather to tap into another side of paranoia and fear; the feeling that your worst nightmare could be around that next corner. Mix that in with all that is loved about the original Resident Evil 4, and it could be another fantastic remake that elevates the survival-horror via another fresh angle in this rebooted-series.
Granted, I may be walking into it sweating profusely and with one eye open, especially after my time with the three games I’ve played for this piece, but when it comes down to it; they’ve been away for too long now; maybe it’s time to bring the arachnids back, to have them be the multi-legged nemesis to Leon in Resident Evil 4 Remake, or reimagined in some terrifying new way for Resident Evil 8.
After all, being scared is what makes horror so enticing…isn’t it?
Comics
‘Spider-Noir’ Comic Changes Explained: How the TV Series Reinvents Marvel’s Darkest Spider-Man
A little while back, I wrote an article chronicling the Hellraiser franchise’s affinity for Film Noir and touched on how that genre has, historically, always been connected to horror.
This connection can be observed in everything from the cannibalistic serial killers of Frank Miller’s Sin City to the disturbing criminal plots fueling neo-noir thrillers like Stuart Gordon’s underrated King of the Ants. That’s why it came as no surprise when I finally sat down to watch all eight episodes of Prime Video’s recently released Spider-Noir series and was confronted with plenty of classic horror tropes.
What did come as a surprise, however, was how showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot approached these horror elements when compared to the 2009 comic book that the show is based on. From the heavily altered rogue’s gallery to an equally terrifying yet completely different origin story for Nicolas Cage’s take on the webslinger, there are plenty of changes here that I feel might be of interest to genre fans.
With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to take a closer look at all the adjustments that Spider-Noir made to the story in order to bring this incarnation of Spider-Man to life in all of its monochromatic glory (unless you watched the True-Hue color version of the show, in which case you’ll be treated to a surprisingly comic-booky palette that you don’t usually see on television).
The Dark Origins of Marvel’s Spider-Man Noir
Our first order of business should be to examine the origins of the Noir comics themselves. Originally published as part of the Marvel Noir alternate universe that reimagined several characters as hard-boiled crime-fighters, Spider-Man Noir became the most successful book in the entire run. This highly politicized story about Peter Parker coming to terms with the capitalist evils of the Great Depression seemed to have struck a nerve with audiences looking for a darker take on the wall-crawler, which is likely why we’d soon see several sequel stories as well as a video game adaptation of the character in 2010’s underrated Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
Of course, it wasn’t just Spider-Man’s darker disposition that made this version of the character a hit, as 1930s New York City was depicted as being much more hostile than what we generally see in the standard Marvel Universe. From Peter’s powers coming from an Eldritch Spider God that spawns man-eating arachnids to Vulture being an ex-Freak-Show Gimp with a taste for human flesh, you can definitely understand why this Web-Head isn’t pulling his punches.
Unfortunately, this alternate universe was a little too popular for its own good, with each subsequent sequel/adaptation further diluting the political anger and classic horror influences that fueled the original comic-book run in order to appeal to a wider audience. Spider-Man Noir was nearly unrecognizable once we got to the Spider-Verse crossover that turned the character into a household name, though this would at least lead to an interesting adaptation in 2018.
The Classic Horror Influences Hidden Throughout Spider-Noir
Jack Huston as Sandman in ‘Spider-Noir’
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller finally translated Spider-Man Noir to the big screen, with Nicolas Cage bringing the character to life in an unexpected case of pitch-perfect casting, he was still mostly relegated to comic relief as his nazi-punching antics and over-the-top edginess were played for laughs. However, while this version of the character had little to do with the comics that spawned him, Spider-Noir’s newfound popularity eventually resulted in the announcement of a darker live-action spin-off – a spin-off that I was cautiously optimistic about.
While the showrunners ultimately decided to go in a completely different direction than the 2009 comic, the new team of writers appeared to understand Noir as a genre in ways that even the folks at Marvel Noir couldn’t quite grasp. That’s likely why 2026’s Spider-Noir boasts plenty of horror elements, just not in ways we’ve seen them before.
The series is obviously borrowing tropes and aesthetics from period-accurate monster movies, with Universal’s 1930s output being a particularly big influence. From the re-imagining of Sandman and Tombstone as tragic figures to The Spider even being operated on by a mad scientist with hilariously antiquated techniques, this bizarre collection of super-powered freaks could have easily shown up in a classic creature feature.
The scares aren’t all retro, however, as the showrunners also injected plenty of body-horror into the mix during their attempt at unifying the origin stories for all these larger-than-life characters. Hell, the Spider himself is now revealed to have gained his powers after being bitten by a half-mutated Man-Spider during World War I, and the aforementioned mad scientist keeps a disturbing collection of failed experiments in her basement, proving that not all of her patients were lucky enough to simply gain superpowers after being experimented on.
Nicolas Cage Reinvents Spider-Man Noir for Television
Ben Reilly/Spiderman (Nicolas Cage) in SPIDER-NOIR
Photo: Aaron Epstein/Prime
© Amazon Content Services LLC
I also really appreciate how Cage insists on depicting Ben Reilly as an arachnid trapped inside of a human body, with his uncanny physical performance and classic Hollywood impressions keeping your eyes glued to the screen while also providing some of the show’s funniest moments.
I still think it’s a shame that the character is no longer politically motivated, and I miss the detail about Uncle Ben having been cannibalized by Vulture after his social activism ruffled too many feathers, but at least this time our protagonist actually feels like someone who could have been written by Raymond Chandler if he were a fan of Superheroes.
In fact, the writers nailed the snappy back-and-forth that Noir authors like Dashiel Hammett used to refer to as the “riposte”, and it’s fun to see supervillains being depicted as horrific movie monsters instead of specialized henchmen – with The Spider feeling like just as much of a Freak Show attraction as the rest of them. Purists might be put off by the lack of reverence for the source material, but I think that’s a small price to pay when even the show’s most clichéd moments intentionally harken back to the golden age of Hollywood.
That’s why I’d argue that Amazon’s Spider-Noir isn’t really an adaptation, but rather an equally valid take on the same premise that inspired Marvel back in 2009. And in a world filled with recycled storylines that only serve to advertise future releases, I’d rather have two completely different visions of the same character than a straight-up retelling of the same handful of ideas.
At the end of the day, there’s enough space inside this comic fan’s heart for both man-eating Vultures and a Cronenberg-inspired Man-Spider. And if you’re also a fan of nostalgic creature features with comic book flair, I’d highly recommend this street-level superhero story with a spooky twist.
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