It’s a pretty close run thing as to which creatures of the Natural World cinema audiences are most terrified of – sharks or spiders. Both are pretty formidable, but our chances of encountering a full-on shark-with-a-nark are slightly smaller than our chances of encountering a rogue spider or two. Arachnophobes are advised to keep well away from director Sébastien Vaniček’s French-language debut feature (subtitled for UK/US audiences) in which a hapless group of residents in a decaying Parisian tower block are trapped in their building by an ever-growing and ever-growing cluster of eight-legged freaks keen to find warm new hosts in which to breed. Eeeek, etc.
Despite his low budget and restricted locations – much of the action takes place in dimly-lit rooms, corridors and service tunnels – Vaniček has created a spider shocker that reminds us exactly why they give us the shivers. In a cluttered Paris store, insect fan Kaleb (Theo Christine) is fascinated by one particular spider specimen. He takes it back to the apartment he shares with his sister Mano (Lisa Nyarko) in a dilapidated urban housing project. There’s tension between the two siblings as Mano wants to refurbish and sell the flat that once belonged to their late mother. However, Kaleb fully intends to stay put and look after his menagerie of creepy crawlies. He’s not best pleased when he discovers she’s turned off the heating needed to keep his beasties comfortable. When friends arrive, the group starts to squabble, and no one notices that Kaleb’s latest acquisition has escaped. Unbeknownst to them, it’s started hatching offspring who quickly grow in both size and number. By the time the residents discover what’s happening, the building has been sealed off by the police, and the survivors are forced to run and fight for their lives against a horde of rampaging, skittering, scuttering, web-spinning monsters. Again, eeeek, etc.
Infested is a well-made, tightly presented thriller that uses its grotty, rundown setting and its misfit characters who, despite their faults, we actually start to care about as they are forced together by something truly ghastly to tell a stifling and claustrophobic horror story. There are spiders literally everywhere by the time we hit the third act, and whilst it’s surprisingly light on gore and proper grisly unpleasantness, this is a film almost guaranteed to give you the screaming habdabs and, very probably, the heebie-jeebies.
INFESTED is streaming now on Shudder.
