Ángel Gómez Hernández’s Crawlers, like its deadly spiders, isn’t in the business of dilly-dallying, making us instantly aware of the giant abscess on George’s (Chris Rogers) upper back almost as soon as the arachnologist walks into his dingy Los Angeles apartment. Within seconds, George is vomiting and collapsing on the floor, and a swarm of baby spiders glides down the slow-moving river of pus oozing from the gnarly wound. If you’re not sufficiently grossed out yet, don’t worry: Hernández’s creature feature has you covered.

When the rundown building at the film’s center is placed under quarantine and no one is allowed out, live-in manager Serena (Matilda Lutz), already overworked by William Miller’s douchey landlord, is left to bear the bulk of the responsibility for getting rid of the deadly infestation. Serena’s predicament is a sly nod to the exploitative practices increasingly common during late capitalism, but, for better or worse, Jayson Rothwell’s screenplay isn’t terribly concerned with its human characters, many of whom never rise above cliché.

The filmmakers are far more inventive with the spiders, finding no shortage of places for them to lurk—inside chip bags, shoes, and baby cribs, above a stalled elevator, behind the eyeball of a recent victim—and wringing real suspense from most of the reveals. This is a taut little B film that makes effective use of confined spaces, boasts some impressively rendered CGI critters, and sustains tension through a steady run of close encounters rather than dragging things out.

It bears mentioning that the premise of Crawlers is distractingly similar to that of Sébastien Vaniček’s Infested from 2023. Coincidence or not, Hernández’s film milks its simple concept for everything it’s worth. The filmmakers may not color outside the lines of creature-feature formula, but they find suitably gruesome ways of dispatching many of their hapless victims and manage what few low-budget horror films do these days: simply doing what it says on the tin.