escape from biology

Feature animation

Logline

Oscar, a spider who can’t spin webs, sets out to prove he is nonetheless hero material. Instead, he gets captured by a creepy biology teacher. To escape dissection and save his family, Oscar must do something no spider has done before: take on a human and win.

Synopsis

Like all spiderlings, Oscar has had the rules about humans drummed into him since birth. If you see one, you hide. Look for a corner. Run for the shadows. Squeeze into the nearest crack. Even Oscar’s father, Colonel Ted, second-in- command of the Spiderguard, is afraid of humans.

Oscar is denied his boyhood dream of becoming a soldier like his father when he fails the physical. He has no spinnerets and therefore can’t spin webs, the one thing that comes naturally to all spiders and is essential to their survival. Undaunted, Oscar sets out to prove he is nonetheless hero material. He press- gangs his friends Donald, a nervous spider whose special skill is camouflaging himself as bird poo, and the unflappable Lou, and together they venture into the world of humans...

Where they are immediately caught. Prunella Pritchett is a creepy biology teacher with an unusual hobby. She mounts and frames spiders and uses them to decorate her walls.

Oscar, at first unaware of the danger, thinks they are being kept as classroom pets. The actual classroom pet, a snooty salamander, would rather eat the spiders than share the limelight with them.

Oscar’s humiliation becomes complete when his father shows up with a rescue unit. But before the Colonel and his men can complete their mission, they are discovered and thrown into the terrarium alongside Oscar, Donald and Lou.

Between warding off an arachnophobic janitor and surviving the spider fights set up by the classroom bully – the spiders discover there is something much worse in store for them than being kept as pets, or even mounted as trophies; they are to be dissected in Prunella’s grade-nine-biology class.

While the Colonel relies on military tactics to devise a way out, Oscar, as usual, charts a different course. He masterminds an escape plan so radical, the balance of power between humans and spiders will never be the same.

Awards

Won Best Screenplay, International Family Film Festival

Selected for the Australians-In-Film Aussie List