Overlook 2024: Infested Review

Directed by: Sébastien Vanicek
Written by: Sébastien Vanicek & Florent Bernard

Starring:
Théo Christine – Kaleb
Sofia Lesaffre – Lila
Jérôme Niel – Mathys
Lisa Nyarko – Manon
Finnegan Oldfield – Jordy
Marie-Philomène Nga – Claudia
Mahamadou Sangaré – Moussa
Abdellah Moundy – M. Benzaoui
Ike Zacsongo-Joseph – Toumani
Emmanuel Bonami – Gilles

Image Credit: Shudder

Running Time: 105 minutes
Not Rated

It’s been a while since we’ve had a good, scary “when animals attack” flick. Don’t get me wrong; we’ve had a few horror flick where the beasts go on the offensive like Slotherhouse, Cocaine Bear and a number of shark movies. But those movies tend to veer away from horror or at least take a humorous tone. When it comes to serious, tension-filled creature feature, it’s been rather slim pickings since at least Crawl.

Trust the French to know how to make a subgenre scary again. Infested, the new spider attack film from Sébastien Vanicek, screnned at the Overlook Film Festival this weekend ahead of its Shudder release later this month. Combining high levels tension with some creepy (and occasionally ridiculous) fun, this is a film to put the fear factor back in eight legged critters, even for non-arachnophobes.

Infested (titled Vermines in its native country) is a single-location flick set in a deteriorating apartment complex. Kaleb (Théo Christine) lives there with his sister Manon (Lisa Nyarko) in the wake of their mother’s passing. They’re at odds; Manon wants to sell the inherited unit while Kaleb wishes for them to stay.

The dispute has led to Kaleb’s estrangement from her and the rest of their friend group. While Kaleb sells designer shoes to make ends meet, he indulges his fascination with crawly exotic animals. When he brings home an illegally imported spider he purchased and named Rihanna, he puts it in a box that unfortunately has a hole. Rihanna escapes and takes no time laying eggs, and soon the complex is overflowing with offspring that are rapidly growing to horrifying sizes and threatening everyone inside.

The premise and most of the plot for Infested is fairly simple and straight-forward: friends vs. ludicrously dangerous spiders. That’s a story we’ve seen more than once. It’s how Sébastien Vanicek delivers it that allows this movie to stand out. Vanicek, who also co-wrote the script with Florent Bernard, spends just enough time with the characters that we get invested with them so that we care when they start getting threatened. Whether it’s Kaleb’s bike-thieving friend Mathys (Jérôme Niel) or the complex’s custodian Claudia (Marie-Philomène Nga), each character gets enough depth that we worry when the little and not-so-little arachnids become a threat.

Vanicek is set to direct the next film in the Evil Dead franchise, and it’s clear from this film that he’s a proper choice for it. He has a way of building suspense through sound design and things happening in the background to ratchet up the fear. He’s able to deliver sustained tension in the best setpiece, a walk through a spider-covered hallway with a light on a dial timer that will have arachnophobes pulling their feet fully up off the floor.

When it’s time for things to get really out of control, Vanicek cuts loose with some very memorable monsters and web-covered set designs. Impressively, it’s mostly practical effects with enough CGI for the spiders to swarm or just be massively-sized in a couple of late-film cases. There’s enough nasty effects work to keep things going and he uses the camera with a Rami-esque touch, combining them with his effective use of the single location play into the terror.

It’s not clear sailing all the way through; a third act scene involving the police slows things down considerably and tries to deliver emotional payoffs that don’t quite hit like they should. The climax also doesn’t quite hit the highs of the rest of the film, though it does feature an impressive final boss of a monster. The minor letdown at the end doesn’t spoil the rest of the film though by any measure, and I’ll be remembering the squicky spider attacks long after any of the flaws have faded.

The Overlook Film Festival takes place in New Orleans from April 4th through the 7th. Infested will begin streaming on Shudder starting April 26th.

8.0

The final score: review Very Good

The 411

Infected is easily the best "spiders attack"-style creature feature in a number of years. Sébastien Vanicek's horror flick jettisons the typical humor the subgenre has seen in recent years and plays it straight for a nerve-fraying and anxiety-inducing good time. Even with a couple of stumbles in the final act, this film makes a strong case for being the 2020s French successor to Arachnophobia.