Kaleb (Théo Christine) visits Ali (Samir Nait), for two reasons: a package pickup as well as looking for an affordable gift for a beloved neighbor who is leaving his building. However, when Ali takes him into the backroom to look at his valuable, possibly smuggled jewelry, Kaleb sees something in addition to a pair of nice earrings. Ali has insects fresh from unknown origins. Among these is a desert spider he’s never seen before.
As it turns out, Kaleb’s hobby is collecting creepy, often endangered, highly venomous animals. Sadly, Kaleb’s sister Manon (Lisa Nyarko) is not helpful for his hobby, since she is being cost conscious and therefore shuts off the heating lamps and humidifiers Kaleb uses to keep his creatures content. This spider is a beautiful specimen, and Kaleb pays well for it.
While Kaleb is out, the spider gets loose and disappears into the wall perhaps never to be seen again.
A day or two later, as Manon’s bestie Lila (Sofia Lesaffre), Lila’s significant other (and Kaleb’s ex-best friend) Jordy (Finnegan Oldfield), and his current best buddy, dopey but well-meaning Mathys (Jérome Niel)are over, Kaleb’s missing spider reappears. It’s bigger now, and it’s got friends. Hundreds of spider babies of varying size have infested their buildings. They like nothing better than to hunt, and any meat will do. Following the first spider kill, the clueless authorities have locked the building down quarantining all the residents from suspicion of some kind of viral outbreak.
Armed with a few utensils and the knowledge that these vermin are apparently stunned to inactivity by sudden bursts of light, Kaleb and his friends will have to make their way to safety. But where do you go when the entire building is infested with creepy, crawly spiders of horrific size and lethality? Sébastien Vanicek helms a surprisingly gruesome exercise in creature horror with the French film, Infested (2023).
Creature horror can take many forms. However, insect-based material never gets old. Infested could easily have been a flick about a simple spider outbreak, but it ups the ante with some truly horrific giant spiders and a weird premise: these suckers seem to get bigger when they burrow inside a body and eat their way out. It’s a kind of body horror premise with nods to Alien (1979) that nevertheless works nicely.
Survival is the name of the game and nowhere in the building is safe for long. A few terrific set pieces await the adventurous viewer, including a lengthy passageway filled with webs and deadly arachnids, which is rendered safe only so long as the hallway’s light timer doesn’t switch off. Such material is worth waiting for, which is good because there is a surprising amount of time to wait before the mayhem gets under way.
The movie does take its time to get into the survival horror creature feature it aspires to be. After a brief prologue in which some desert region dudes in turbans capture specimens for undisclosed reasons (apparently sale to folks looking to pay top dollar for rare and endangered species) the movie slows right down to give us a proper character study of Kaleb, his core circle of allies, and the dozen or so potential victims who can meet arachnid ends later on. This slow burn sequence can test the patience of viewers looking for jump scares or horror movie mayhem. This kind of material will come and in good amounts, but it will take thirty or more minutes following that prologue.
As well, the film is subtitled, which will likely scare away a minor cross section of the potential audience for the piece. So, heads up if that means you.
In many ways, Infested is to 2023 what Arachnophobia was to 1990, though distinctly lacking that film’s sense of humor. It’s closer in spirit to 2019’s Itsy Bitsy. However, there is a very human story at the heart of Vanicek’s film both about these estranged siblings as well as the occupants of this low income building that is touching in ways other killer spider movies typically do not try to be. As well, there is no small amount of social commentary here as the police become antagonists in the film’s final third. Are they acting for the public good, or are they targeting these hand-to-mouth poor folks for destruction under the guise of an anti-terror or anti-pandemic operation? We are never quite certain and that adds a layer of uncertainty and chill to the proceedings.
When it gets past the opening section that introduces us to the characters and their lives, Infested has a good sense of pace and creeping dread. With a social awareness, some pointed things to say about folks who hustle to get by and the elderly folks who share their living space, Vanicek’s picture offers both a critique of France’s current social situation as well as a disturbing creature feature.
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Here in the States, Infested is currently showing on Shudder as well as VOD via a subscription on sites like Amazon. It is not yet available in DVD or Blu-ray editions.
Writing for “Arach Attack: Infested (2023)” is copyright © 2024 by Daniel R. Robichaud.
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