Don’t Watch Infested (FANTASTIC) If You Have a Fear of Spiders
Title: Infested
First Non-Festival Release: December 27, 2023 (Theatrical Release)
Director: Sébastien Vanicek
Writer: Florent Bernard, Sébastien Vanicek
Runtime: 103 Minutes
Starring: Théo Christine, Lisa Nyarko, Sofia Lesaffre
Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here
This film’s review was written after its screening at the Fantastic Film Festival in 2023.
It’s estimated that somewhere between 3 and 15% of the population suffers from arachnophobia: an intense fear of spiders. While spiders provide many benefits to the ecosystem, and humans specifically, their ability to provoke fear is understandable. Be it their appearance, their movements, or the implication that they can always hide away undetected until they wish to make their presence known again, spiders can be unsettling for plenty of reasons.
Not for Kaleb (Théo Christine) though. Kaleb is a determined yet not too successful young entrepreneur attempting to break into the shoe selling business. Sharing an apartment in a rundown building with his sister (Lisa Nyarko) after their mother passed, the two spend their days embroiled in their personal projects butting heads along the way. When Kaleb brings home a spider to add to his growing collection of vivarium-sheltered critters and loses it, he unknowingly sets off a chain of events that unleash a rapidly reproducing and growing venomous spider infestation in his building.
A tour-de-force creature feature, Infested showcases just how important it is to craft a good scare in a simple story.
Creepy crawly creature features have a reputation for being throwaway watches on the Syfy channel at 10:00am on a Saturday morning. Infested proves just the opposite. A carefully constructed tale of gradually escalating terror, this spider attack film avoids every pitfall of its contemporaries by balancing the audience’s desire for monster mayhem with their need for a good story. It certainly helps that the film boasts fantastic production values too, making the events feel real.
What could have been brainless monster mayhem, Infested surprises with its tender approach to its characters and surprisingly smart script. Kaleb is not the brightest nor is he the strongest. He is an altogether ordinary man who is thrust into an unbelievable situation. His care for others becomes his driving force, constantly going out of his way to save his friends and neighbors from the creeping menace and police inaction. Throughout the film, both his former best friend and his sister reveal why they have drifted so far apart, and they spend the rest of the film making up for it. Kaleb isn’t given an easy way out for all his mistakes, but Infested does a great job of humanizing him and making him an excellent leader to rally for.
Its dilapidated apartment complex setting serves as the perfect launching pad for its surprisingly meaty subplot about police and low-income housing incompetence. Most people can relate to living in dense housing in one way or another if they have lived in a city, few can appreciate the daily irritations of living in a sub-par building. The less-than-stellar apartment complex in Infested is a few steps away from demolition already before the spiders take over everything. Its crumbling infrastructure and poor utilities impede the character’s survival often, but its worst effect is on the police. Its crumbling infrastructure and poor utilities impede the character’s survival often, but the police manage to make things even worse for the world’s unluckiest tenants.
Given the people that live in this building, the police clearly think they are disposable because of their income. Their response only heightens paranoia and encourages residents to lock themselves away to their deaths in spider-ridden rooms. Their continued incompetence leads to more loss of life when they refuse to believe Kaleb and the crew while they try and evacuate the building. It’s a frustrating yet believable subplot that adds an extra layer to the webs of Infested that make it stand out so well.
Dripping with skin-crawling tension and expertly times scares, Infested explores the full spectrum of horror available to our eight-legged friends. A cold open featuring a group of poachers venturing into the desert explores just how deadly the arachnids in question are. Every move made by one man struggling to contain his specimens results in panic for the audience, unsure of which way the venomous spiders will elude his grasp and punish his intrusion. Tense closeup shots of his extremities showcase how vulnerable he is until the inevitable attack ensues. Infested is full of moments like this. From long, drawn out scenes of people living ordinary lives mere inches away from these creatures to action-packed scenes of the cast fighting through layers upon layers of spiderwebs, Infested lives for switching up its tactics. Gross out? Shock? Tension? Infested has it all and does it splendidly.
What makes Infested so believable is its commitment to making the spiders look real. Creature effects in horror films tend to have a hit-or-miss impact. Given the state of the subgenre, there are few entries that claw their way up to greatness due to budget constraints. It’s hard to make an animal look horrifying when they are so far removed from what they look like in reality. Infested does not have that problem. The little devils are perfectly depicted, making it impossible to tell what is real and what is computer generated or practically constructed. It is obvious that time and energy was put in to make Infested look great, which pays dividends in making it the most upsetting creature feature since Jaws.
As a reviewer there are very few films that I can say have terrified me over the years. I have no ulterior motives when I say that Infested is the scariest film I’ve seen since my childhood. Filled to the brim with unbearable tension and a sticky set design, this spider horror film weaves web after web of arachnophobia-induced terror to pummel the viewer into submission. Excellent effects, great performances, and an unexpectedly sweet narrative on human connection following grief, Infested is one of the best horror films of the decade. Once Shudder releases this stateside next year, you’ll find yourself ensnared in its web soon enough.
Overall Score? 10/10
