INFESTED/(vermines) (2023)
a review by Evan Landon
This one has flew so far under the radar, that I didn't even know it existed until a few days ago when we watched it together in our Monster Fam group. Gone are the days in the early 2000's where French horror stretched the boundaries of what is “acceptable” on screen. While this 2023 creature feature by Shudder does not quite do that, the atmosphere is so palpable that you feel like you are right there with the characters of the film.
Speaking of the characters, none of them are all that fleshed out, or even likable, but that is par for the course in movies like this. The main character is explicitly despicable, as from the very start he is trying to switch from selling drugs to the people in his apartment complex to selling them faux designer shoes. I won't go into how his hair gives away how big of a douchebag he is, but he really is the only one with anything resembling a character arc. I guess maybe his best friend does too because he is scared for most of the film, then does something heroic at the end, but I don't think that spoils anything. The cute French Palestinian girl is a bit of a weird one because she is supposedly a cop, but that part of her character is lost very quickly and never explored. Her boyfriend also has an interesting introduction, as he is against killing any animals, but when he shifts his values in the matter of a minute, we discover more about the spiders themselves.
Oh... I'm sorry, this movie is about mutated spiders from the desert that the protagonist gets from buying his cheap knock off shoes from. I honestly thought the movie was going to be about shoes for the first half hour because of how much they talked about them. When the spiders start taking over the building though, all that nonsense is out the window. Think Arachnophobia meets Rec. That's a pretty good description.
On a side note, I found this peculiar: the name of the movie in French is “Vermines” to which I had to posit a thought. Most likely, we associate “vermin” to be rodents that inhabit such apartment complexes, and even though it could be said the same for the spiders as an invasive species, perhaps it meant more of the humans inhabiting the domicile itself. I only preclude this from the measure to which the police force sent to control the outbreak only wanted to keep them from leaving as to not spread, which could be a metaphor for how society views the lower class... Just a thought.
Being all en francais, it may be a bit difficult for anyone that hates subtitles in their movies, but even then, I think it is enjoyably enough to where you don't even really pay attention to it. Speaking to the atmosphere of the film, director Sébastien Vaniček does an incredible job of bringing you into the very space that these venomous arachnids take up in. He is going on to head up the next “Evil Dead” spin-off, so that will be a treat! I know, I know... But I will definitely watch it.
It's difficult to say how well this movie did financially because it was sent straight to Shudder (which, by the way, is the only streaming platform I feel okay paying for), nor how much was spent on it, but given the release and production, it was definitely on an indie-scale budget. If you enjoy a good currently-made creature feature with arachnids, and you don't mind the subtitles, this one is definitely for you.
3 out of 5