Close on the heels of the release of the Australian spider horror film Sting comes the release of the French spider horror film Infested – and these two would make for the perfect double feature pairing, given that they’re both about deadly, rapidly growing spiders being unleashed in apartment buildings.
The first thing a filmmaker has to do when putting together a spider horror story is figure out whether or not they want to address the origin of the spider(s) or give a reason for why they’re suddenly killing large numbers of people. The 1977 classic Kingdom of the Spiders had tarantulas running wild because pesticides were eradicating their natural food supply. The 1990 classic Arachnophobia had a new species of spider being discovered in South America – and then being accidentally brought back to small town California, where it mates with a local spider and creates a whole new breed of deadly arachnids. Sting got around the question very quickly by having the spider simply smash through an apartment window in a meteorite. That was a space spider. For Infested (also known as Vermines in its native France), writer/director Sebastien Vanicek and co-writer Florent Bernard went for a more down-to-earth explanation. In an opening scene that’s reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s Dead-Alive in a certain way, they show us that the exceptionally deadly spiders featured in this story can be found in a desert somewhere in the Middle East, living in tunnels beneath rocks. The trouble begins when some of these spiders are bottled up and taken to be sold as exotic creatures – and one is purchased in Paris by a young man named Kaleb (Théo Christine), who just happens to be a fan of reptiles and insects. He takes the spider back to the apartment building he lives in... and it doesn’t take long for it to get loose. Given what we saw in the opening sequence, we know terrible things are going to happen once this spider bites someone, and the situation is made even worse by the fact that it’s soon giving birth to quickly multiplying offspring.
When the first spider victim is found, the authorities are called in – and since they have no idea what could have caused a death like this, they jump to the conclusion that it must be some kind of viral outbreak and put the apartment building on lockdown. So Kaleb and the other residents are stuck in there while the building becomes infested with deadly spiders... and it’s pretty mind-blowing and terrifying to see how quickly these things are able to completely overrun the rooms and halls. And wipe out the residents.
At the heart of the story are Kaleb, his sister Manon (Lisa Nyarko), his friend Mathys (Jérôme Niel), Manon’s friend Lila (Sofia Lesaffre), and Lila’s boyfriend Jordy (Finnegan Oldfield), who used to be close friends with Kaleb and they have some unresolved issues with each other from their youth. All of the actors do strong work bringing their characters to life, with Christine making Kaleb an interesting, layered lead – but it was Lesaffre who really impressed me with the intensity of her scared, panicked performance.
The level of fright and panic displayed by Lila totally makes sense when you see the scenarios Vanicek drops the characters into. He makes the spiders so deadly and overwhelming, there are moments where even viewers who don’t have arachnophobia will be creeped out by the things Kaleb and his companions have to deal with. The spider effects tend to be very convincing, which helps Vanicek bring some great suspense sequences to the screen.
Infested is a great feature directorial debut for Vanicek, and I could understand why Sam Raimi was so impressed by it that he decided to hire the fresh filmmaker to direct an upcoming entry in the Evil Dead franchise. His first movie is a well-crafted movie that is sure to give a lot of viewers uneasy feelings (my girlfriend couldn’t even keep her eyes on the screen for most of the movie) – but it does have some pacing problems at times, and for me there were moments where it felt like it was starting to drag. It has a running time of 105 minutes, and I would have enjoyed it more if Vanicek had found a way to let some of the air out and get it closer to 90 minutes. But as it is, it’s a good, creepy horror flick that shows Sebastien Vanicek is a director to keep track of.
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