Infested

Sébastien Vaniček and his instant ticket to the A-Horror League. I'm gonna go give out prizes, because this is where history is made. So Vaniček made a dream debut (right on the lines of the recent successful debutants like Robert Eggers, Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, Zach Cregger), the best spider horror film of all time (it's quite funny that the previous king is already 30 years, Arachnophobia), kicked off this year's French wave and at the same time made the best horror film of the year – no one could ask for a better way to start. Whether Infested will be dethroned by the new Alien or Nosferatu at the end of the year is another matter, but until then it can enjoy the pedestal merrily. And now for the film. After a long time, I experienced very uncomfortable feelings with horror, and since ghosts and demons don't do anything to me, spiders as a real evil definitely had an effect. The housing estates of the French ghetto evokes an interesting atmosphere in itself, you don’t get to really form much of a relationship with the characters but that didn't bother me. The craftsmanship is excellent and once it gets going, it really is a spider atmospheric hell crammed with jump-scares like Sam Raimi's Drag me to Hell, and I twitched along decently (I also praise the aptly chosen musical score!). Admittedly, it got more intense as the spiders got smaller, but even the big ones had something going for them – that's where the CGI came in handy. It's a bit marred by the ending, I was expecting a bigger carnage, the mass battle spiders vs cops was over too quickly for my taste, and the whole thing ends quite hastily – I could have easily managed 20 minutes more – but these are minor flaws in the beauty of a film that is born once every three decades. Anyone who doesn't appreciate that is an arrogant scumbag and an enemy of the state and me. 9/10. (04/28/2024)

Infested can most easily be described as a mix of Arachnophobia, REC, and Evil Dead Rise, and it's really no wonder Sébastien Vaniček was put in charge of the next addition to the latter franchise. This debut is an instant ticket to the premier horror league, managing to make a perfectly crafted, very intense film that doesn't have much competition within the spider horror genre. Especially, as long as the creatures are small and nimble, it worked for me 100% and I twitched with very high frequency. I don't even want to imagine how much better this film would have worked if it had more likeable characters that you cared about. The protagonists are, for me at least, the biggest stumbling block, especially the fact that their characters imply some very questionable decisions, which at one point exceeded my tolerance level. There is a thing one of the characters does about 15 minutes before the end that wouldn't have been done by the most anti-system asshole at that point, there's just no justification for it. It's exactly the moment when, as a viewer, I stop "experiencing" what's happening on the screen and start saying WTF instead. (03/05/2024)

A very weak, generic genre film. A group of young adults are trapped in a spider's web along with the entire residential building due to one single mistake. In the place I watched it, they really tried hard and placed artificial spider webs and spiders, but that's pretty much all that can be remembered positively about it. (05/14/2024)

Objectively a strong 4*, but I can't help but go for a full score, as we haven’t seen a quality movie with spiders for 20 years, this is such a terribly intense, yet underrated and (for some reason??) forgotten genre that every addition is welcomed with open arms by all fans. And Sebastien Vaniček has done a truly incredible job of it, because Infested is top shit in every way, from the expensive visuals to the never-ending suspense to the excellent five leads, who can act and can be scared, I fully bought their emotions. The looks of the spiders is disgusting and arachnophobes can forget about the film as this is really quite unpleasant and can terrify even the most hardened. I also have to praise the certain "overkill" of the whole concept of evolving spiders as it opens the door to endless variety in terms of spider evolution in a few hours, so we get all the different sized creatures at once, which is a big plus. The film has momentum, a solid pace, and expensive visuals – what more could you ask for? Not to just praise, I also have to critically say that the film has quite a few flaws: sometimes people act stupid, I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't get more heart-attack inducing scenes, where, for example, the spiders would have crawled more on the characters and we as viewers could have enjoyed more physical disgust on ourselves and felt them behind the screen, and it's also a great pity that the finale doesn't actually explain the whole thing and showing us how the situation was resolved. However, due to the absolute drought in this (sub)genre, this is a full five out of the park and I absolutely cannot understand why more films with spiders aren't made, as when a solid budget is added to the mix, half the battle is won and there's always a fanbase for this type of movies. Anyone who doesn't see spiders everywhere they go for a few days after this film probably didn't watch it right and should repeat the process with headphones and a darkened room. Great. (04/29/2024)

In the history cinema dating back more than a century, we can count the number of high-quality arachnocentric horror movies on the fingers of one hand, or maybe both hands if we squint our eyes. And I am pleased that their ranks newly include this French spider spectacular.  However, the experience that it provides depends heavily on the extent of your arachnophobia, because it’s not about likable characters or nice landscapes. It rather takes place in an apartment block on a French social housing estate and its protagonists are rebellious odd-jobbers and adolescents whose survival will be of no concern to you until the final quarter of the film. But the apartment building has a brilliant circular design patterned on a spider web, the spiders multiply rapidly and actually look like real, live spiders (in a French genre film by young enthusiasts!), and more than one scene is so intensely scary that you’ll get goosebumps and hold your breath. The fourth star is for the cinema experience with good sound. [Sitges Film Festival] (10/12/2023)