French import Infested arrives on the heels of 2024’s other major spider-themed release, the eerie and properly nasty Sting. Coincidentally, both titles take place almost exclusively in an apartment building to give their creepy-crawlies free roam of the grounds. The most glaring difference here: where Sting chronicled a little girl whose singular spider grows to a horrifying, monstrous size, Infested features hundreds, if not thousands, of repulsive poisonous desert spiders. Apparently, the black market for exotic species of animals very much exists. Writer/director Sebastien Vanicek (future director of the recently-announced new entry in the Evil Dead franchise) and co-writer Florent Bernard craft a frenetic and outwardly off-putting monster movie that evokes the feeling of accidentally walking through a cobweb.
An eerie opening scene set in the desert in which we see these disgusting insects in their natural habitat nicely establishes the unnatural movements and long twisting legs that will recur throughout. Even the credits have cobwebs curling all along their edges. Thankfully, that opener is the last we have to see of multiple spiders for quite some time. We next meet an interesting roster of characters, primary of which is shoe re-seller Kaleb (Theo Christine), who lives with his sister, Manon (Lisa Nyarko), in a medallion-shaped apartment building. The natural next step in Kaleb’s journey to craft an at-home zoo just became all the more obvious. When picking up a gift for a cute old woman about to move out of his building, Kaleb’s eye catches an exotic spider in a small container. The rest, as they say, is history.
Kaleb brings home the spider to its new home, but the creature never even makes it into the tank. It chomps its way through a shoebox. How does one spider turn to hundreds, one might ask? Apparently, the female spider lays cocoons overflowing with its eggs. Egg-laying females also can multiply their size tenfold. Before long, these spiders are wreaking havoc on every floor of the apartment building. Once they prowl inside the ventilation system, no room is off bounds. Kaleb must join forces with his sister, his ex-friend, Jordy (Finnegan Oldfield), and two others that were over doing work on Kaleb’s apartment. Toxic sprays and aggressive crushing cannot seem to flush out these spiders. With a quarantine holding down the building, can Kaleb and company somehow make it out alive?
By giving us breathing room to know these characters, especially Kaleb, Infested saves the inundation of spiders for truly vital moments. Situations are teased and only later do they become used as tension-building tools, such as a crank-light with a minute timer. Being set within this apartment building allows for plenty of fun setpieces. At times, it morphs into a funhouse of horrors, wherein everywhere our characters turn presents a challenging new obstacle. One of the standout sequences involves a stretching hallway covered from top to bottom in thick webs and dangling spiders. The camera flips upside down several times as it zooms down the hallways, curiously proving to be an homage to The Evil Dead. Best of all: the special effects are terrific, integrating the freaky spiders into a tangible atmosphere of dread.
At its peak, Infested does a terrific job at emphasizing the terror of being pursued by hundreds of bugs. This builds in peaks and valleys, but the camera always follows till the bitter end. Underneath the ick, more heart emerges than expected. Most of its texture comes from Kaleb grappling with the recent loss of his mother. The rest focuses on Kaleb’s love for animals, and his lifelong dream to construct an animal habitat. The building may be swallowed whole by not-so-tiny invaders, yet the human element lingering just underneath its surface makes Infested feel truly special.
Infested screened at 2024’s Overlook Film Festival, and crawls onto Shudder on Friday, April 26th.
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