Infested is Attack the Block with added spiders… and that’s a good thing. A homage to John Carpenter, in other words. Confined space, conflicted characters, churning synths, an invisible foe… until it suddenly isn’t, it’s (mostly) all here.
It’s the feature debut of French director Sébastien Vaniček and impressed Sam Raimi enough to get Vaniček a gig directing the next Evil Dead movie – a franchise back from the, er, dead. You can see why Raimi signed him up. Raimi-like, Vaniček wastes no time getting his story going, and then prioritises forward momentum.
In disaster-movie style we meet a bunch of characters before following them into a situation full of jeopardy. Some will survive, others won’t. But unlike the more traditional disaster movie (The Towering Inferno most obviously), Infested doesn’t insist on neat morality – the good guys aren’t all good – which means it’s hard to predict who’s next for extreme prejudicial treatment. Another big thing in its favour is that as it picks-n-mixes from other movies, it covers its tracks. Was that a lift from Train to Busan? Wasn’t that reaction shot Spielberg? Maybe, maybe not. Steal from the best.
The movie hangs off its central characters. Kaleb (Théo Christine), a plausibly tough yet surprisingly sensitive hood-dwelling loudmouth with a conscience and a passion for collecting exotic animals. Semi-estranged sister Manon (Lisa Nyarko), semi-estranged best friend Jordy (Finnegan Oldfield), bike thief Mathys (Jérôme Niel), Manon’s bestie Lila (Sofia Lesaffre), along with various block badasses, older relatives and friends and ancillary characters – like the janitor, Mme Zhao (Xing Xing Cheng) who arrives on screen in early scenes with a massive “kill me first” arrow pointing metaphorically right at her.
Already in the film’s opening moments Kaleb has taken delivery of the rare spider that will deal the destruction, unaware that it’s devastatingly poisonous – a pre-credits sequence has done its work here – and pregnant. The spider has soon escaped from the container Kaleb housed it in and is replicating with astonishing speed, its offspring growing bigger thanks to a hastily explained bit of nonsense-Darwinism – subject them to survival stress and they adapt, in a nutshell.
The movie proper starts here and it isn’t long before the lights have gone out and the running around and screaming has started. People die. The spiders breed like they’re on speed, getting bigger as they go. The synthy, stringy soundtrack (Xavier Caux, Douglas Cavanna) goes for angular, scratchy spider-adjacent mood music and at key moments Vaniček tries to capture on screen what arachnophobia feels like, with a spinning camera conjuring up a mind unmoored by fear.
It’s unsettling and yet not really that frightening. Arachnophobes probably won’t agree but there is a slight pantomime aspect that keeps nudging things towards the comedic (maybe that’s what Sam Raimi picked up on). Vaniček seems intent on delighting us rather than petrifying us and there are enough “it’s behind you” moments to suggest that this movie could have a long afterlife as a Friday night pizza-beer staple.
In among the death and mayhem, social commentary as the authorities crack down with scant regard for the block dwellers, a mixed bunch of mostly decent sorts with the odd bad apple but who are treated as if it is they who are the infestation (the French title, Vermines, makes this read-across more explicit).
Théo Christine covers himself in ragged glory as the not-that-tough Kaleb, but the entire cast is good, even if the only face you’re likely to recognise is Finnegan Oldfield’s (bigger than this, you’d have thought). Lisa Nyarko is also particularly good, though Manon’s beef-with-my-bro character’s arc is way too neat. And it’s the same beef Jordy (Oldfield) is nursing, as if Jordy’s character had been copy-pasted from Manon’s when Oldfield unexpectedly came on board.
Too long is its only crime. There’s a moment about 20 minutes from the end where it appears to come to a proper conclusion, and then it goes on a bit longer, squandering some of its goodwill. Plenty remains, though. A meat and potatoes horror movie would have been fine but Vaniček has put a lot of thought in – who’d have thought hoodies would come in handy when spiders are dropping from the ceiling? A nice touch in a film full of them. The Evil Dead await.
Infested – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
