John’s Horror Corner: Infested (2023; aka Vermines), a much more serious, much more stylish, and much more French approach to Arachnophobia (1990).

MY CALL: This film was excellent. Everything about this was great. It was truly a blast and a pleasure, and it will make your skin crawl in the best way possible. Why haven’t you seen this yet? Go see it… now! MORE MOVIES LIKE Infested: Of course, Arachnophobia (1990). But for more highly stylish horror, consider Saloum (2021). For more buggy French horror, try The Swarm (2020; La Nuee). And for more “trapped in a building with evil”, consider [REC] (2007) or Evil Dead Rise (2023).

Director Sébastien Vanicek’s first feature film earned him the attention of Sam Raimi, who immediately wanted him to do his next Evil Dead spin-off movie, the most recent of which (Evil Dead Rise) also had apartment building tenants trapped with unwanted deadly guests. And I must say, from the opening scenes through the opening credits, Vanicek is quite the stylish filmmaker. The spider-collecting scene in the desert meshes a sense of cold criminal behavior with biological field work. The montage depicting the transit of the spiders from field to city to post to pet trade has the flavor of a drug cartel’s process, and the hard-cut editing and foreign hip-hop form a tense yet energized pairing. Good call, Raimi. This guy’s got the goods.

Infested (2023; aka Vermines) is a much more serious and much more French approach to Arachnophobia (1990). And whereas Arachnophobia begins in equatorial rainforests, Infested opens in the desert of the Arabian Peninsula. In both cases, the spider kills one of its discoverers, and kills another when someone slips on a shoe. So it seems the influencing film is being directly homaged. Frankly, this is like the unofficial Arachnophobia remake we’ve been waiting 30 years to see. Only now it also has the added dimension of trapping its victims in an apartment building with a quarantine, not unlike [REC] (2007); a dash of a more mature-minded Eight-Legged Freaks (2002); and the film includes some strong social commentary on lower income and ethnic communities.

At a store specializing in various imports and wares from Dubai, Kaleb (Théo Christine) purchases a deadly spider on a whim. Kaleb lives in a run-down apartment building where he collects exotic pets and racketeers sneakers. About as soon as he gets his new pet home, it escapes from its container and produces an egg sac. The spiders reproduce and grow at a rapid pace, and their venom courses through the apartment hallways trailing behind a webbed wake of corpses and spiderlings.

Scenes featuring skittering spiders or tiny swarming spiderlings are shocking even when expected. And boy does this film do well in making its audience feel uneasy whenever spiders are observed crawling along walls, up arms or through vents. It may be a major biological faux pas that these spiders make chirping sounds and grow inordinately large (too large), but even that nice touch serves the film well in staging its suspense. I find myself tensing up and smiling in anxious anticipation, and jumping with a nervous laugh with each subsequent scrambling spider. I adore the high-pitched squeegee-sounding violins twisting my panicked brain and wincing face. This movie is so much fun!

Imagery of spiders emerging from the mouths (and bodies) of the dead are creepy delights. With so much CGI, there was every opportunity to disappoint with some of these effects and the thousands of spiders and wispy webs spanning the screen—but that never happened. Everything was tactful and thoughtfully executed. Vanicek brings hope to those jaded horror fans bemoaning the unexciting redundancy of the genre by infusing a dynamic filmmaking style into the layers of clear effort of the cast and crew. Everyone involved to a great job. This film was excellent.