"What’s great about Kari," Elkayem adds, "is that she not only conveys total competence in handling the action, but she is simultaneously believable as a parent, a sheriff with strong ties to the community, and as a woman who was once very much in love and might be again."
Carrying a rifle and kicking arachnid butt wasn’t that much of a stretch for Wuhrer – at least not the part about the rifle. The actress attributes her familiarity with gun handling to her father’s job as a police officer, and her ease with action sequences to former film roles such as Anaconda. "I love physical movie work," she says, acknowledging the appeal of a challenge. "Being able to shoot and wear a uniform, that’s right up my alley."
But Sam Parker is not a cliché, nor does Wuhrer portray her as such. "It’s not a pistol-packing Mom character," she clarifies. "Sam is a single mother and a sheriff, and she takes both of those jobs seriously. This is a woman accustomed to taking care of herself, her family and her community. The trouble is, she’s been so focused on her responsibilities that she hasn’t had much of a life of her own for a long time, and seeing Chris in town again makes her wonder about some of the choices she’s made."
Scott Terra, who Devlin calls "a major discovery," plays the part of Sheriff Parker’s young son Mike and so brings to life an archetype role made famous in every film of this genre, that of the intelligent-beyond-his-years youngster who has the vital answers that the adults ignore. As Elkayem explains, "it’s usually the kid who knows what’s going on but no one believes him until it’s too late."
"Scott easily handles a fair amount of daunting technical dialogue about the scientific names of spiders and other information he delivers when things start to get out of hand," says Devlin. "In some ways it’s an adult role and he pulls it off with humor and intelligence. He’s completely believable."
Comedian and actor Doug E. Doug, best known as the Jamaican bobsled racer in Cool Runnings and for his role on the popular Cosby series, stepped into the part of Harlan Griffith, a paranoid radio broadcaster who fills the local airwaves with his endless rants about government conspiracies and alien invasions, from his broken-down trailer on the outskirts of town. To the townspeople, Harlan is pure entertainment, so when he begins hysterically announcing the arrival of mammoth spiders no one takes him seriously.
Doug was attracted to the story primarily because "it was fun," he says. "There are moments of true intensity but the humor pay-off is huge."
Coming from a stand-up comedy background, Doug appreciated the fact that the filmmakers were open to his interpretation of the character. "As a performer, ideally you’d like to have some room to create, within the context of the script, and Ellory is a director who has respect for that process."
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