INFESTED (2023 - French)

Studio:   Shudder
Director: Sebastien Vanicek
Writer:   Sebastien Vanicek, Florent Bernard
Producer: Harry Tordjman
Stars:    Theo Christine, Sofia Lesaffre, Jerome Niel, Lisa Nyarko, Finnegan Oldfield

Review Score:

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Summary:

Neighbors trapped inside a rundown apartment building fight to survive a rapidly growing infestation of rare, deadly spiders.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

A group of desert hunters captures a rare spider species capable of rapid reproduction and growth. Aware of the deadly mutations they cause in humans, one hunter uses a machete to behead another hunter who becomes infected following a spider bite.

Kaleb, a young street hustler who traffics in black market merchandise and also collects rare insects, purchases one of the spiders from bodega owner Ali. Upon returning home to the rundown apartment he shares with his sister Manon in a dilapidated building, Kaleb and Manon get into an argument over Manon's supposed refusal to ingratiate herself to the neighbors who were important friends of their deceased mother.

Kaleb stashes the spider inside a shoebox before attending a party for beloved neighbor Claudia. Kaleb has other encounters with various neighbors in the building including standoffish Mrs. Zhao; Mathys, Kaleb's friend who sells stolen Nikes with him; Toumani, who anxiously awaits delivery of shoes he ordered from Kaleb; kindly Mr. Benzaoui; Gilles, a disliked neighbor who routinely accuses Kaleb of dealing drugs; and Moussa.

Kaleb returns to his room to discover the spider escaped its shoebox. Strangely, Kaleb finds a cocoon left behind that he places inside the box. Meanwhile, the escaped spider triggers an infestation by creating more spiders that gradually spread and take over the building with their webs and spiderlings.

Kaleb wakes the next morning to find his sister invited Jordy, Kaleb's former best friend from childhood, and Jordy's girlfriend Lila over to help Manon with ongoing apartment renovations. Kaleb and Jordy passive-aggressively express their longstanding resentment toward one another.

Kaleb delivers a pair of shoes to Toumani. A spider bites Toumani when he tries on the shoes while alone. Toumani's dog Maggie also eats one of the spiders.

Alarmed by Maggie's incessant barking, worried neighbors break into Toumani's apartment to find him dead from a grotesque mutation. The authorities are called, and they subsequently quarantine the entire building based on the sickly scene inside Toumani's place. Kaleb, Mathys, Manon, Jordy, and Lila are forced to confine themselves inside Kaleb and Manon's apartment.

Following a frightening encounter with spiders in the bathroom, Kaleb admits he purchased a spider for his collection, but he doesn't understand how one spider could have caused such a massive infestation. Kaleb and the four friends realize they are in serious danger when he opens the box to show the cocoon he found and discovers an entire swarm of spiders inside.

Manon suggests escaping the building, which spurs another argument with Kaleb, who again accuses her of being selfish. The friends agree to give Kaleb and Mathys 15 minutes to warn other neighbors before fleeing the building together. During this time, spiders kill Mrs. Zhao, Moussa, Claudia, Mr. Benzaoui, and Toumani's dog Maggie.

Armed with a tire iron, Gilles forcibly stops Kaleb, Mathys, Manon, Jordy, and Lila from leaving. Gilles then barges into Kaleb's room to search for illegal drugs, but he ends up opening a box of spiders that swarm him.

Kaleb, Mathys, Manon, Jordy, and Lila use the opportunity to escape only to find halls and stairs blocked by spiderwebs. The five of them eventually make it through an infested passageway, but police prevent them from opening an exit door. The police then release a gas that causes Jordy to become separated from the group. Spiders ultimately kill Jordy, whose painful death devastates the other four friends.

Kaleb, Mathys, Manon, and Lila use fireworks and other tricks to fight their way through the spiders and into Gilles's apartment for safety. In a quiet moment, Lila asks Kaleb about his broken friendship with Jordy. Kaleb confesses that his friendship with Jordy, who shared Kaleb's childhood dream of opening a zoo together, ended over an incident with a pet who badly bit Jordy. Lila reveals she and Jordy actually came to the building to make amends with Kaleb, not to help Manon with renovations.

Cops suddenly raid the room. Treating them as hostile, the armed officers capture the four remaining friends and confine them to a staging area in the parking garage.

Realizing he was infected in the previous commotion, Mathys sacrifices himself by releasing spiders that divert the attention of the armed men. Kaleb takes a bullet in his leg to rescue his sister during a chaotic firefight. While holed up in a van surrounded by large spiders, Kaleb and Manon reconcile their estranged relationship.

Lila uses a car's bright lights and loud horn to give Kaleb and Manon a window to escape the van. Kaleb survives a standoff with an enormous spider to open the garage door, allowing he, Lila, and Manon to finally escape.

Some time later, Manon and Lila watch from a distance as the apartment building is demolished. Meanwhile, Kaleb mourns Jordy by burying a keepsake photo of them from childhood.

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Review:

Life ain't easy for residents of the rundown French apartment complex at the center of "Infested." Pranksters like to punk Mrs. Zhao with a fireworks surprise when all she wants to do is move her trash cans. Gilles goes further with his hatred for boorish behavior, anxiously awaiting an opportunity to catch kids selling imaginary drugs so he can punish them with pugilism. Manon stays busy with never-ending renovations, since nearly nothing from the lights to the heat works in anyone's apartment anymore. Beloved neighbor Claudia has had it up to here with the crumbling building, so she's finally on her way to a better place that even includes a yard.

Kaleb is the common connection among this eclectic collection of underachieving twenty-somethings and kindly retirees. He's a street hustler by trade, although not necessarily by choice. Kaleb can usually be found fast-talking his way into a bodega store bargain or fencing merchandise that "fell off a truck" somewhere. His minor crimes aren't entirely victimless; someone lost the fat stack of Nikes he's been dealing at a discount, after all. But they're at least non-violent, as Kaleb adheres to a strict moral code out of respect for his neighbors, just like his deceased mother would have wanted.

"Infested" wants audiences to appreciate Kaleb for his heart of gold, a typical trait for grey-area heroes like him. That's why, after early scenes of arguing with his sister and reluctantly helping his buddy Mathys stash stolen bicycles, we see Kaleb generously gifting Claudia with a going-away memento, and insisting he can't give a guy new kicks until he finds a pristine shoebox to put the pair in. Details matter when you're trying to take care of your community, even if they are paying some unknown expenses for his actions.

And pay they do, because hard knocks keep coming to everyone in his building when Kaleb's side hobby of collecting rare insects brings home an unusual species of spider. In scenes vaguely reminiscent of "Indiana Jones" and then "Gremlins," Kaleb takes possession of an arachnid that can not only reproduce at an alarming rate, it grows in size just as fast. You don't have to worry about getting it wet or feeding it after midnight. You do have to worry about rope-like webs, countless babies continuously being birthed, and spiders ranging in size from small enough to scurry over your body to almost big enough to block a hallway. Once it's overrun, getting out of this place goes from figuratively difficult to literally impossible.

If "Infested" has one noticeable drawback, it's that the duration runs a touch too long. That's kind of a minor quibble since, at 102 minutes without credits, it's only about 10 minutes longer than an average horror film, which is far from egregiously excessive as truly wheel-spinning thrillers go.

That's also a catch-22 complaint because it's that extra time spent getting acquainted with everyone that invests us in their stories, some much more than others. That latter part is the problem. The balance between featured characters is uneven, with some people quickly fading into "oh yeah, who's that dude again?" territory while others get thematic through-lines whose emotional impacts aren't onscreen long enough to fully develop. So when "Infested" hits some of the gut-wrenching beats that aren't related exclusively to arachnid action, a few fall flat due to a lack of audience investment.

Then again, humans aren't the main attraction in a movie like this anyway. Spiders obviously are, and "Infested" unleashes them in abundance. They crawl in close-ups. They scatter in startling swarms. They bite. They burrow. They cause gooey mutations that turn web-walled rooms into grotesque abattoirs of slime-covered corpses.

I must admit that I have barely a faint flick of arachnophobia, so I wasn't as affected by "Infested" as so many others seem to be. Based on what I'd seen and heard about the movie being practically the peak of spider-fright films, I expected to see more relatable moments of skin-crawling sickliness, like a spider worming its way into your ear, waking to find one crawling out of your mouth, or something along the lines of everyday experiences. "Infested" includes a touch of that, except it amps up its action to be more fantastical than natural. Brought to life with believable FX, the little-to-big buggers look like actual arachnids in spite of their sizes, not like puppeteered creations with massive mandibles you'd see on a Saturday night with Svengoolie. But this movie's spiders are more like mini-monsters that rush and attack people rather than resemble any encounter you'd ever have in your own home.

"Infested" will probably be more commonly classified as a "creature feature," or whatever term might be preferred for an insect-based creeper, though I'd say it's more of an interesting twist on the "tower block/siege" thriller formula. Moody cinematography makes dark environments feel dangerous. For good and for bad, the character mix adds an element of personality not often seen in this fear-focused corner of cinema. Of course, it's the spiders making or breaking what anyone will get out of the movie, and folks who already have daily nightmares about creepy-crawlies will of course get more kicks than those who don't normally fuss over eight-legged eeriness.

NOTE: The film's French title is "Vermines."

Review Score: 65

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