Infested (2024)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Arachnophobia has always held the corner, for me, on spidery horror films. From the ilk of a black-and-white superimposed predator in Tarantula through the laughably icky CGI creatures in Eight Legged Freaks, big, man-eating spiders stem from the "nature horror" subgenre I dearly love. But they are a league unto their own, firmly entrenched in classic literature and epics and making appearances in a variety of horror flavored by everything from fantasy (Itsy Bitsy) to sci-fi (Sting). Arachnophobia perhaps holds the dearest place in my heart because it is the most realistic in terms of the size and behaviors of its wee beasties, offers the least by way of CGI effects, and manages to be as heartwarming and funny as it is terrifying and deeply disturbing. Sébastien Vanicek's feature film debut, Infested, follows this mold shockingly, horrifyingly closely. I haven't screamed this much in a first time viewing in many long years.

It doesn't help that I'm terrified of spiders, but this film's extraordinary use of hundreds of real, live huntsman spiders is the definition of horror to me, especially when they get digitally enlarged. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The nightmare begins quickly, and with a distinctly punk-rock style, in modern Paris as we zoom in on a large low-income apartment complex with a vast assortment of immigrants and brown-skinned citizens. A young man named Kaleb (a very handsome Theo Christine) purchases a large, nasty looking spider from the back room (read: black market) of a convenience store without knowing anything about it but excited to add it to his collection of bugs, amphibians, and reptiles. He takes the spider home, where his sister Manon is none too pleased about his wall of expensive, tanked critters. Manon is busy trying to renovate their crumbling unit to sell after the death of their mother, and their friends Mathys, Jordy, and Lila are helping too. Kaleb curiously doesn't seem to be helping them much -- his "job" of hustling high-priced sneakers is suggestive of his lifestyle and prospects -- but he is caring and affectionate for many of their neighbors as well as the staff of their complex.

We get to know these characters well enough that we care for them. So, when the spider escapes its box, we are immediately worried for their welfare. We -- not Kaleb or anyone else -- already know how horribly aggressive and venomous it is, thanks to a nasty opening sequence.

I won't describe the bulk of the film in detail, but it's essentially a sprint through a haunted house. Each new scene falls domino-like into the next with such a sense of taut propulsion that you'd think it'll never stop. Its score, thrumming and driving like a greasy goth band at some dive (yes, I thought of Green Room more than once), pushes and pulses like its own character. Grim, grimy set design makes every shadow look like -- well, not a spider so much as a fucking nest of spiders. Ones that keep getting larger, learning to attack in packs, biting for fun rather than for food, breeding rapidly and in expansive colonies, and with generally unpredictable behavior but deadly impact. The film deftly indicates their evolving horror, from simple bites and running around to laying egg sacs every-damn-where, eventually swarming girls in showers and pouring through air vents, and ultimately taking up residence in the bodies of corpses to crawl out of their orifices. Their insidious infestation is the stuff of literal nightmares, whether or not you've yet had any.

The horror is buttressed, too, by the genuine, earned fear we have for the characters. Beloved side characters die in quiet, violent, cruel ways. One neighbor's death is so shocking and deeply sad that my friend and I had to pause the film and process it in the moment. Our core group of friends/family don't all make it, and when one in particular dies a particularly nasty death, there is a single scene of the survivors, lit by a flare, screaming and weeping as they apparently try to remain sane. It's one of the most believable scenes of instant, earned grief I've ever seen on film.

There's something additionally chilling about this film apart from its spiders. Like in [REC] or Shivers, almost the whole film takes place inside a large apartment building, and much of the horror stems from seeing one's intimate neighbors succumb to violence and death. As the characters try to escape, doors are barred and the authorities outside have quarantined the building, locking it down and preventing inhabitants from exiting. In our post-pandemic age, this carries extra weight. But what's most fascinating to me is a quote from the director that indicates the original French title of this film was, translated, Vermin, and that he wanted to demonstrate how, like unwanted bugs, immigrants and laborers and the poor are not wanted by popular society and relegated to an endangered, dirty living situation as a result of xenophobia and classism, even and especially in the heart of a metropolis. 

It's a smart, artistically and technically proficient roller coaster of a horror movie, one that had me literally screaming time and again, scratching at the prickly tingles that ran up and down my limbs, and burying my face in my shirt collar even as I sweated my way through my clothes. Vanicek's debut is more than impressive: it's important. If you can handle it.