I enjoyed it as well, and I also love Sandler when he does high art films. Uncut Gems, Spanglish, and Punch-Drunk Love are all really well-crafted films, and if you're looking for more of his serious work and haven't seen them already, dive in.
For myself, I believe the spider was real. Why?
Selfishly, I just wanted it to be real. The minute it shows up, they toy with the "he might be crazy" thing, but the thing is, I've seen that "it's just imaginary!" angle taken in a lot of arthouse films. It's like they're pulling away from the joy of creating a truly weird/spec-fic story. I say, bust out the Bradbury! Get that classic sci-fi thing where the universe is full of alien spiders looking for deeper connections!
Beyond that, we have the spider's assurance that it is real. Okay, this could be a fabrication, but I think that was basically the movie saying, "Look, the spider's really there. Don't spend a lot of time thinking about the truth of the spider. We really want to talk about loneliness, isolation, and connection."
As to your big question, I think the answer is more that Hamus wasn't really just a spider. I think his species are more shape-shifters and this is just a manifestation. I think he's a weirder being than the movie shows us.
Of course, I haven't read the book and I don't know for sure, and there's plenty of evidence that the spider is just a hallucination, but I think it's more interesting if it's not. This not only makes Jakob's journey more interesting than just himself berating his own sub-conscious, but it also adds the spider as a character who also grows as a "person," and finds a greater connection through Jakob. They help each other find a friend, rekindle elements of their past, and find endings/beginnings together.
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