Infested

Infested
Theatrical release poster
French	Vermines[1]
Literally	Vermin[2]
Directed by	Sébastien Vaniček
Screenplay by	Sébastien Vaniček Florent Bernard [fr][1]
Story by	Sébastien Vaniček[1]
Produced by	Harry Tordjman[1]
Starring	Théo Christine Sofia Lesaffre [fr] Jérôme Niel Lisa Nyarko Finnegan Oldfield
Cinematography	Alexandre Jamin[1]
Edited by	Nassim Gordji-Tehrani Thomas Fernandez[1]
Music by	Douglas Cavanna Xavier Caux[1]
Production companies	My Box Films Tandem[1]
Distributed by	Tandem (France)[1] Shudder (U.S.)[2]
Release dates	30 August 2023 (2023-August-30) (Venice Film Festival) 21 September 2023 (2023-September-21) (Fantastic Fest) 27 December 2023 (2023-December-27) (France)[1]
Running time	105 minutes[1]
Country	France
Language	French

Infested is a 2023 French horror film conceived, co-written, and directed by Sébastien Vaniček in his feature directorial debut. Its original French title is Vermines, which is literally Vermin in English. The film stars Théo Christine as a twenty-something banlieue resident who buys a lethal desert spider that reproduces rapidly and causes a massive infestation in the neighborhood. Sofia Lesaffre, Jérôme Niel, Lisa Nyarko, and Finnegan Oldfield are featured in supporting roles.

Vaniček conceived the film as a social commentary on xenophobia, drawing parallels between spiders and banlieue residents. American streaming service Shudder acquired the film for the United States, Canada, and other key international territories ahead of its premiere at the 80th Venice International Film Festival and screening at Fantastic Fest 2023. The film was released in France on 27 December 2023, and on Shudder on 27 April 2024. Critical reception to the film was "overwhelmingly positive".^[3]

Plot[edit]

Four Arab smugglers hunt for spiders in a Middle Eastern desert, during which one of them gets bitten after dousing a nest with poison gas. More spiders crawl from the nest, which they net with plastic containers. The bitten man is then killed by his companion with a machete before escaping in their truck.

One spider ends up in the backroom of a convenience store in Paris, where sneakers dealer and exotic animal lover Kaleb buys it along with earrings. Back home in a multicultural suburb, Kaleb seizes a troublemaker's bag containing fireworks used to pull a prank on janitor Mrs. Zhao, is reminded by his bicycle-thieving friend Mathys that he must sell Toumani his sneakers soon, and argues with his sister Manon over whether to sell their deceased mother's house. Kaleb keeps the spider in his room, only to lose it later after giving Claudia the gift earrings at her farewell party. Unable to find it, he takes Toumani's sneakers and sleeps in the living room.

The next day, Kaleb argues with his former friend and Manon's boyfriend Jordy, whom she invited along with Mathys and her friend Lila to help with renovating the house. Kaleb sells Toumani the sneakers, after which xenophobic resident Gilles approach and suspects them of dealing drugs. Toumani gets bitten by spiders crawling out of a sneaker. After hanging up on Toumani several times, Kaleb goes to his apartment, only to find him dead. His body is wheeled by authorities, who put the building on lockdown, causing panic among residents.

Gilles is adamant that Toumani died of drug overdose as a result of his earlier transaction with Kaleb, who repeatedly denies giving him drugs. Jordy kills a spider bothering Manon in the bathroom, but spiderlings emerge from it and he barricades the room. Kaleb admits causing the infestation. He hands Jordy the shoebox containing the cocoon his spider made when it escaped. Jordy and Mathy seal it, horrified that spiders have reproduced inside. Kaleb agrees to leave with the group, on the condition that Claudia joins them.

Finding Claudia dead, Kaleb and Mathys run back to Jordy, Manon, and Lila, who learn that the spiders belong to the Sicariidae family. The infestation worsens: the spiders have grown exponentially and are reproducing rapidly, killing more residents, including Mrs. Zhao. Discovering their escape plan, GIlles attacks them with a baton, and stabs open the sealed shoebox he thinks contains narcotics and is attacked by the spiders inside. En route to the parking garage, they carefully tread a barely-lit infested hallway, but fall back in darkness when police gas and shoot at them, during which Jordy gets caught in a web and is left for dead. Upon learning the spiders' sensitivity to light, Mathys uses the fireworks to aid with their escape to the roof. They reach Gilles' room, where Kaleb regrets cutting off his childhood friendship with Jordy, after having learned from Manon that even though Jordy ratted him out to the police when Kaleb's pet iguana bit his leg, he would always dismiss it as an accident so that nobody would think badly of him.

After a struggle with the police, the group is apprehended and taken to the parking garage, where the lieutenant defends the lockdown, which Kaleb dismisses as a failure, as it did more harm than good. Mathys helps them escape by charging at the door leading to the infested hallway, igniting a battle between spiders and armed men. Lila unties Kaleb, who then tells her to stay in her car while he finds Manon. He is reunited with Manon, albeit shot in the leg. They break into a van, where she puts pressure on his wound; they patch up their differences. As spiders close in on them, Lila's headlights suddenly shine on them, allowing the siblings to escape with her. They are spared by a spider blocking their path, and Kaleb opens the garage door.

Later, Manon and Lila tearfully watch the suburb collapse, while Kaleb buries a shoebox containing a childhood photo of him and Jordy in the woods. Kaleb takes a spider crawling on his shoulder at the palm of his hand and blows it away.

Cast[edit]

Production[edit]

On 15 February 2023, Variety reported that principal photography on a French horror film entitled Vermin was underway in Paris, due to be completed on 3 March 2023.^[4] The magazine noted that French short film director Sébastien Vaniček would mark his feature directorial debut with Vermin (which he co-wrote with Florent Bernard [fr] and would feature real spiders), and that "local up-and-coming actors" Théo Christine, Finnegan Oldfield, Jérôme Niel, Sofia Lesaffre, and Lisa Nyarko had been cast.^[4] Vaniček told Screen Rant that he had already cast Christine when he and Bernard were writing the script.^[5] Vaniček eschewed references to other horror films in favor of originality, although he cited 2015's Green Room as a major influence on his film as well as acknowledged "obvious" similarities to 1979's Alien (of which he is a fan).^[6] In order to pitch the film, he had to bring not only the script but also his 150-page concept art for the film.^[6]

Vaniček considered the film "very personal", in that it "depicts the French suburbs [he knows]",^[4] drawing on his own experience living in such tight-knit communities while also coming to terms with how they are perceived in French urban areas.^[6] According to Vaniček, he could not understand why would suburbans be discriminated merely on the basis of being a part of these communities, which were seen as crime-ridden and unpleasant in general.^[5][6] He saw this issue as an opportunity to make a creature film exploring people's irrational fears through spiders, the fear of which he attributes to the way they move and look, finding this idea ripe for social commentary on xenophobia.^[5] He explained at Screen Rant:

You have this interesting parallel with spiders, because spiders are judged for their appearances, and then people from the suburbs are judged for where they come from. So, I immediately had this parallel, and I knew that I would treat my characters like the spiders, they are in the same building, and they will have to survive. And surviving means that you have a battle between these two, because people try to kill them, and they have to defend themselves from their predator.^[5]

Vaniček had the benefit of combining real spiders with CG spiders due to the film's chronological order.^[5] Two hundred giant huntsman spiders were used, which were then made bigger digitally. Vaniček had only about 10 seconds to film each spider, as it easily fled on camera, in which case he and the crew would place it on another surface and use this limited window before it moved again.^[7] Because the script called for scenes in which the cast was to communicate with spiders, actresses Lisa Nyarko and Sofia Lesaffre had to conquer their fear of spiders at the beginning of the shoot.^[5] Similarly, Vaniček said he took close-up shots of the spiders with the intention of showing how not frightening but "complex and beautiful" they are, whose aggression in the film stems purely from survival instinct as a result of being taken away from their habitat and being attacked by humans.^[6][7]

Release[edit]

American streaming service Shudder acquired the film for the United States and Canada as well as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland ahead of its premiere at the 80th Venice International Film Festival;^[2] it began streaming on Shudder 26 April 2024.^[8] At the Venice Film Festival, the film was the International Critics' Week section's closing feature.^[9][10] It later entered the competition at Fantastic Fest 2023, winning Best Picture and Best Director,^[11] and was screened at the 2024 Overlook Film Festival.^[12] The film premiered in France on 27 December 2023.^[1]

On 2 May 2024, the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in France, the latter disc in a collector's edition 4K Ultra HD plus Blu-ray combo pack.^[13]

Reception[edit]

According to Screen Rant, the film garnered "overwhelmingly positive reviews for delivering compelling thrills and developing human characters",^[3] but polarized audiences over the visuals, which were compared unfavorably with those of 1990's Arachnophobia and 2007's The Mist.^[14] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 59 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "A chillingly effective creature feature with more on its mind than simple creepy-crawlies, Infested draws viewers into its web with stylish efficiency."^[15] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 70 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[16] Stephen King, author of The Mist's source novella, published a capsule review on X calling Infested "scary, gross, well made".^[3]

Variety critic Dennis Harvey found the film entertaining and effectively scary, albeit "conceptually unremarkable".^[8] Harvey praised the performances, particularly that of Theo Christine, attributing these to the director Sébastien Vaniček's acerbic dialogue and human drama. Likewise, he said Vaniček handled a variety of genre elements with "taut balance" and that the film's technical aspects (from the visuals to the soundtrack) looked "first-rate" even on a seemingly tight budget. Ultimately, Harvey said the film should be a must-watch to horror fans notwithstanding its quite "anticlimactic" finale.^[8] At Slant Magazine, Mark Hanson acknowledged that the film would satisfy fans of creature films, but was himself displeased by its conventional narrative as well as sense of urgency to draw tension among audiences at the expense of character development. Hanson said the film's social commentary was offset by its stock characters, making it less impactful than intended.^[17]

Thematically, the film highlights social situations in the French suburbs such as class and racial discrimination and police brutality with its depiction of harsh treatment of its characters by both the authorities and the government. Film critics also likened the police lockdown to those during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting themes of quarantine and isolation.^{[9][10][18][19]}

Accolades[edit]

The film was nominated for Best First Feature Film and Best Visual Effects at the 49th César Awards.^[20]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Official website (in French)
• Infested at IMDb