'Crawlers' Review: Plenty of Creepy Crawlies but Not Enough Bite
By Becca Johnson - November 13, 2026
Directed by Spanish filmmaker Ángel Gómez Hernández (Don’t Listen), Crawlers is a creature feature that turns an everyday apartment complex into the setting for an arachnid nightmare. When a deadly spider infestation breaks out at the Paradiso Palms, building manager Serena (Matilda Lutz) and the residents find themselves trapped under quarantine as the venomous creatures spread throughout the building.
Crawlers delivers some effective horror sequences with spiders that are suitably creepy, but the mileage ultimately varies depending on how much you buy into its characters and the story surrounding them, which prevent it from reaching its full potential.
The horror is where Crawlers really shines, kicking things off with a gruesome cold open before wasting little time in bringing the spiders back to our screens to cause more havoc. The spiders themselves are suitably creepy, varying in size and appearing in such numbers to truly create an arachnophobe's worst nightmare. There's a real sense of unease whenever they appear, particularly as you never quite know where they're going to pop up next. However, it's not just the creatures themselves that make the film so effective, but also the damage they cause, with some seriously gross body horror adding to the carnage. Hernández clearly knows how to get under your skin, making good use of the spiders to deliver some nasty moments that are bound to make viewers squirm. As far as the horror elements are concerned, Crawlers delivers plenty of gruesome fun, with some excellent carnage candy for horror fans to get stuck into.
If only all that carnage were happening to better characters. The performances are a little lacklustre, although this feels more like a problem with the script than the actors themselves. The characters are largely over-the-top caricatures who are difficult to take seriously, with their annoying personalities making it hard to see them as real people. Unlikeable protagonists can certainly work in a horror film, but here, they come across as irritating rather than particularly compelling, leaving you with very little reason to care about their survival. Luckily, Matilda Lutz (Revenge) comes in clutch, grounding the film with a solid performance as the building manager and the one character who feels like an actual person. Having to deal with the residents' varying attitudes, endless complaints and general weirdness is already enough of a challenge, but when everyone's safety is on the line, she's really put to the test. Lutz handles it well, bringing some much-needed humanity to a film that is otherwise lacking in it. At least there's some fun to be had in watching the most unlikeable residents get despatched in increasingly gnarly ways.
Creature features are a dime a dozen, making it difficult not to compare Crawlers to others that have come before it and done a better job. Sébastien Vaniček's Infested from 2023 is an obvious point of comparison, also using an apartment complex as the setting for its spider-infested chaos, but doing a much better job of developing its characters and exploring the themes beneath the carnage. Crawlers is simply too silly to fully connect with in the ways it needs to, with its tongue-in-cheek humour only occasionally landing and often feeling more daft than genuinely witty. The effects also become a little repetitive as the film progresses, which takes away from the tension and makes it harder to remain invested in the increasingly gruesome set pieces. For all the nastiness on display, there's only so much enjoyment to be had when you don't particularly care who makes it out alive.
There’s enough to enjoy in Crawlers, particularly if you’re here for the gruesome kills and creepy spiders, but it’s difficult to overlook the issues holding it back. The horror is effective, and Matilda Lutz delivers a strong performance, yet the lacklustre characters and underwhelming script make it hard to become invested in the chaos that unfolds. It’s a perfectly serviceable creature feature that offers some nasty fun, but one that struggles to stand out in a genre that has given us much better examples. There are certainly worse ways to spend your time, but Crawlers is ultimately a bit of a mixed bag.
'Crawlers' is available now on digital platforms, following its release on November 9, 2026.
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Becca Johnson
Senior Writer
Becca is a cinema obsessed Rotten Tomato-approved freelance critic from Essex, UK, with a penchant for horror and coming-of-age.
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