INFESTED (2022) Is A Few Legs Short Of Greatness
There seems to be a near-universal agreement that spiders are creepy. With eight legs, weird eyes, hair, and spinning webs out of butt silk, spiders are also one of the most misunderstood animals out there. Most people will kill spiders they see in their house, but did you know that house spiders are what keep more pesty insects away from your home? Some regions believe that spiders are a good omen and a sign of prosperity, a stark contrast to the “nope” reactions most people give them. Regardless of how one feels about spiders, they make great fodder for horror films, despite not getting a lot of main attraction attention. The list of spider-theme horror films isn’t a long one, and in 2024 we have already had more spider films released than the last 10 years combined. One of these films is the Shudder Original, Infested. Directed by Sébastien Vanicek, the new heir to the Evil Dead franchise, is “Infested” creepy and crawly?
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Residents of a rundown French apartment building battle against an army of deadly, rapidly reproducing spiders.
HOW IS IT?
Let’s get this out of the way, “Infested” is a solid creature feature that accomplishes most of what it sets out to do. While spiders are a common trope in the horror genre, they don’t always get featured in prime time and often play a background to help add to the atmosphere of a location. The prevailing assumption is that if there are spiders, especially a lot of them, this is not a place you want to find yourself. “Infested” is a spider movie at its core, but it has aspirations of being something bigger. Blending in commentary about class and law enforcement, it attempts to cram in a lot of subtext that doesn’t always work. Nevertheless, “Infested” has some great performances with characters you care about and moments of great tension that occasionally suffer from pacing issues.
Comparing films to others isn’t always a good idea, but sometimes inspirations and patterns are almost too uncanny to disregard. While 1990s Arachnophobia may be the first to come to mind, 2011s Attack The Block is a more apt connection. Kaleb (Théo Christine) has more in common with Moses in “Attack The Block”, and thematically both films tackle the struggle of the impoverished and the biased treatment they get from law enforcement. The nods to “Arachnophobia” are still there, especially in the opening and credit sequence, but aside from exotic spiders that kill there aren’t more comparisons to be made. The movie may advertise spiders, but the show's stars are the group of friends trapped in their crumbling apartment building. “Infested” spends a lot of time developing these characters and their relationships, and this works in favor of the film because you care what happens to them. The performances elevate the material making the relationships feel more authentic, and the drama more pronounced than your average creature feature. In a way, it is the opposite of American Kaiju films in that those have thin human characterizations to make way for the massive monsters. “Infested” certainly has its fair share of spiders, but you spend more time with the characters than with the eight-legged freaks inhabiting the building. The music and score are perfect for the film, and when the spiders are on screen they are genuinely creepy. It is also worth acknowledging that the relationship to spiders in this film is more effective given it is grounded in an admiration upheld by Kaleb. While most people think spiders are creepy and gross, Kaleb celebrates them and their arachnid kin, which adds a layer of emotional complexity we don’t often get in a creature feature. In “Infested”, the spiders are not so much antagonizing as they are surviving, and that nuance is helpful and welcomed.
Where “Infested” starts to struggle is with its pacing, thematic aspirations, and lighting. On the pacing front, “Infested” yo-yos between moments of high tension and more subdued moments of melodrama. The unfortunate byproduct of this is that “Infested” never really maintains momentum when it needs to, and thus makes the film feel longer than it is. This is most apparent in the third act when the film haphazardly tries to tie up thematic loose ends in the midst of what should be the most climactic moment. Instead, we see very little of what we came to see; spiders and people going at each other, and instead are given some forced melodrama that distracts from the pandemonium happening at the same time. This also brings us to the lighting. “Infested” is very dark and the lack of proper lighting may give way to more authenticity, but it also means you can hardly see what is going on at some of the film's most pivotal and exciting moments. Take a scene where two characters discover one of their neighbors has been infested with spiders. It is so dark in the scene that you can barely notice the spiders coming out of her head, and you’re left wondering what the characters are seeing that the audience isn’t. Some of this lack of visual clarity can be blamed on the use of shaky cam, but it isn’t overdone like in the recently released Arcadian. Still, the lack of lighting in the right scenes means that we don’t get a clear view of what we all want to see, spiders attacking people. Again, this is a shame since when we do get a clear view of the spiders they look great, save for some of the CGI ones added in.
LAST RITES
“Infested” does a lot of things right that many creature features get wrong by focusing on character development and interpersonal relationships. That decision works for the most part, but it also robs the film of the more exploitative elements that make creature features fun, and in turn, means you get less of what you came for even if what you get is better than average.
THE GORY DETAILS
Directed By
Written By
Starring
Where can you watch it?
Streaming on Shudder Friday, April 26th, 2024!
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