Infested: Itsy Bitsy Spiders Grow and Grow

Movie Info:

Kaleb is about to turn 30 and has never been lonelier. He’s fighting with his sister over an inheritance and has cut ties with his best friend. Fascinated by exotic animals, he finds a venomous spider in a shop and brings it back to his apartment. It only takes a moment for the spider to escape and reproduce, turning the whole building into a dreadful web trap. The only option for Kaleb and his friends is to find a way out and survive.

Review:

Infested, a French horror film, shows that spiders and horror can do no wrong. The critters are inherently creepy and scary. All a first time director like Sebastian Vanicek has to do is throw up a bunch of cobwebs, corral characters into some dark corridors and let the arachnids do what arachnids do best. The film is a genuine delight despite its wobbly social commentary ending. The original French title “vermine”, and the bannileau slum setting tells you what injustice is being criticized.

It’s the relationship between brother and sister, Kaleb (Theo Christine) and Lisa (Lisa Nyarko), that gives the movie its edge. They are slightly estranged and grieving for their recently passed on mother- yet are still willing to unite and fight for the little legacy (the apartment) the mom left them. Later, it expands to the whole downtrodden community of souls that live amongst them. They are fighting the destruction of their world both from spiders and a society that sees them as vermin.

The spiders are the usual Darwinian arachnids in overdrive- quickly multiplying and growing larger, with a nasty and deadly poisonous bite that causes gross physical complications. The action is nonstop, even though bits in the dark corridors and encounters with the police can go on too long, sapping some of the tension while Infested stops for sibling repair and social commentary moments. The squabbling between sister and brother and their circle of spider fighters does come off as authentic though. The gradual cocooning of the tenement adds neat notes of claustrophia and terror. Triming some of the social commentary scenes with the police would make it more efficient and scarier. But in French cinema art and political commentary go hand in hand.