Alright, I admit I am fearful of spiders. I understand their importance in the ecological chain of things. And their webs are a thing of beauty. But if I ever see an eight-legged critter skitter across the kitchen floor my shoe is coming down hard on it.
There are not enough shoes to combat the arachnid invasion of a tenement building in Infested, an intensely scary new French horror film directed by Sebastien Vanicek.
Kaleb (a magnetic Theo Christine) lives with his sister in their mother’s flat in a rundown tenement building in France. The lights click out in the hallways, there are leaks in the ceiling (which hamper Kaleb’s illegal sneaker selling) and Kaleb has to keep turning on the grow lights he has in his bedroom, which houses many rare reptiles and bugs. He unwisely buys a sand spider from a shop owner who traffics in rare animals and insects. But the many-legged “Sicarius” gets out of the Nike box he temporarily stores it in and then quickly overruns the complex, breeding hundreds of spiders (all of varying sizes and some as large as cats).
As the spiders lay waste to the tenants in the building (even making homes in their bodies as breeding grounds), the police seal off the place in quarantine and Theo and his friends try desperately to stay alive in this new web-filled, incredibly dangerous habitat.
What’s cool about the movie is the focus of the film is on the toughened kids who navigate this new nightmare with street smarts and bravery. But as the aggressive killer spiders spread and mutate one wonders who will survive.
The film moves at a break-neck pace. Once the spider infestation kicks in the movie shifts into overdrive. For me, I have to admit the film made me a nervous wreck but I loved it all the same, and grew emotionally attached to the group of plucky, rap-obsessed youths.
Infested, which was nominated for two Cesar Awards and won a special jury award at the Stiges Film Festival, “For being a powerful and political horror movie,” begins streaming on Shudder on April 26th.