{The Overlook Film Festival} Infested (2023)

Some movies feel made to play on the festival circuit. Film fans when they are all connected are the best. Genre film fans are even better. The entire festival buzzes when a crowd has a visceral reaction to a film. I happened to be in that screening at The Overlook Film Festival. French director Sébastien Vanicek has just such a hit with Infested. Infested is the scariest film I have seen in 2024. The best news is you don’t have to wait long to check it out. Shudder is set to release it on April 26th.

The plot is a basic building under siege narrative set in a unique apartment building in France. Kaleb(Théo Christine) is our hero who scratches a living on the edge of legality. He makes barely enough money to stay in his apartment by selling black-market shoes while also looking out for the other members of the complex. Christine is as charming as he is one-dimensional. It sounds negative but honestly, I appreciate that Vanicek creates a protagonist we can root for. In an age where our villains are sometimes heroes and our heroes are increasingly complicated, it’s nice to see a good guy just being a good guy. There is one glaring error that kicks off the movie. He introduces an incredibly rare and aggressive to the apartment by accident and as spiders do, it multiplies. It was a big error but I forgave Kaleb immediately and so should you. Who among us has not accidentally introduced an invasive species to our ecosystem?

As the building becomes more and more ahem…..infested the survivors find themselves quarantined by the police trying to stop the spread. It is nice to see that the police everywhere kind of suck. After the first kill which doesn’t take long to happen the movie does not stop. It is relentless which means one knarly spider after another finds a new victim. It is not just that the spiders look great (they do and if they are all computer generated I am even more impressed), but the sheer quantity. There are thousands of them and each time ten or twenty of the spindly but small-bodied spiders came out of a vent or a drain the entire audience squirmed.

It is hard to believe this is Vanicek’s first feature film. The narrative is clean and consistent and the camera work incredibly confident. Each member of Kaleb’s group has something to contribute and every one of them is likable in a different way. As a result, there is a great deal of heart in the third act as Kaleb explains his connection to the apartment and reembraces his relationship with his sister, Lila (Sofia Lesaffre). Kaleb is a complicated dude who has been through a lot and as the film explores his past relationship with his best friend Mathys (Jérôme Niel) I couldn’t help but get choked up.

If there is anything wrong with this film (and I am really stretching to get there) it is that I didn’t have time to breathe. I think if the film would have left off the gas occasionally it would have allowed me to look clearer at the gorgeous web design and spiders. Most of the time I was sunk in my seat brushing away phantom spiders that were just locks of my hair. It seriously took an hour for my heart rate to slow down. My only wish is that more people could see this film late at night in a crowded theatre. The audible gasps and shrieks reacting to a couple of the hallway scenes were fantastic.

Some folks may try and compare Infested to other spider films in the past. It does have a lot of the humor of Arachniphobia. It doesn’t have the spider scale of Eight Legged Freaks but it does have its quantity. It is the film’s smart use of foreshadowing that makes the film a joy (Looking directly at you Checkov’s light timer). Check it out on April 26th on Shudder. They have a bonafide hit on their hands.