Infested

Infested is a 2023 French horror film conceived, co-written, and directed by Sébastien Vaniček in his feature directorial debut. Its original French title is Vermines, which is literally Vermin in English. The film stars Théo Christine as a twenty-something banlieue resident who takes home a lethal desert spider that reproduces rapidly and causes a massive infestation in the neighborhood. Sofia Lesaffre, Jérôme Niel, Lisa Nyarko, and Finnegan Oldfield are featured in supporting roles.

Vaniček conceived the film as a social commentary on xenophobia, finding parallels between spiders and banlieue residents. American streaming service Shudder acquired the film for the United States and Canada and other key international territories ahead of its premiere at the 80th Venice International Film Festival and screening at Fantastic Fest 2023. The film was released in France on 27 December 2023, and on Shudder on 27 April 2024. Critical reception to the film was "overwhelmingly positive".

Plot
Three Arab smugglers hunt for spiders in a Middle Eastern desert, during which one of them gets bitten after dousing a nest with poison gas. More spiders emerge from the nest and the others net them with plastic containers. The bitten man is killed by his companion with a machete. The survivors escape in their truck.

One spider ends up in the backroom of a convenience store in Paris, where sneakers dealer and exotic animal lover Kaleb buys it along with a pair of earrings. Back home in a multicultural suburb, Kaleb seizes a troublemaker's bag containing fireworks used to pull a prank on a janitor, is reminded by his bicycle-thieving friend Mathys that he must sell Toumani his sneakers soon, and argues with his sister Manon over whether to sell their deceased mother's house. Kaleb keeps the spider in his room, only to lose it later after giving his neighbor Claudia the gift earrings at her farewell party. Unable to find it, he takes Toumani's sneakers and sleeps in the living room.

The next day Kaleb argues with Jordy, his former friend and Manon's boyfriend whom she invited along with Mathys and her friend Lila to help with renovating the house. Kaleb sells Toumani the sneakers, after which xenophobic resident Gilles approaches and suspects them of dealing drugs. Toumani gets bitten by spiders crawling out of a sneaker. After hanging up on Toumani several times, Kaleb finds him dead in his apartment. Toumani's body is wheeled away by authorities, who put the building on lockdown, causing panic among residents.

Gilles is adamant that Toumani died of drug overdose as a result of his earlier transaction with Kaleb, who categorically denies selling him drugs. Jordy kills a spider bothering Manon in the bathroom, but spiderlings emerge from it and he barricades the room. Kaleb admits causing the infestation. He hands Jordy the shoebox containing the cocoon his spider made when it escaped. Jordy and Mathys seal it, horrified that spiders have reproduced inside. Kaleb agrees to leave with the group, on the condition that Claudia joins them.

Finding Claudia dead, Kaleb and Mathys run back to Jordy, Manon, and Lila, who learn that the spiders belong to the Sicariidae family. The infestation worsens: the spiders have grown exponentially and are reproducing rapidly, killing more residents. Discovering their escape plan, Gilles attacks them with a baton, and stabs open the sealed shoebox he thinks contains narcotics and is attacked by the spiders inside. En route to the parking garage, they carefully tread a barely-lit infested hallway, but fall back in darkness when police gas and shoot at them, during which Jordy gets caught in a web and is left for dead. Upon learning of the spiders' sensitivity to light, Mathys uses the fireworks to aid their escape to the roof. They reach Gilles' room, where Kaleb regrets cutting off his childhood friendship with Jordy, after having learned from Manon that even though Jordy ratted him out to the police when Kaleb's pet iguana bit his leg, he would always dismiss it as an accident so that nobody would think badly of him.

After a struggle with the police, the group is apprehended and taken to the parking garage, where the lieutenant defends the lockdown, which Kaleb dismisses as a failure, as it did more harm than good. Mathys sacrifices himself by charging through the door leading to the infested hallway, igniting a battle between spiders and armed men. Lila unties Kaleb, who then tells her to stay in her car while he finds Manon. He is reunited, albeit shot in the leg, with Manon. They break into a van, where she puts pressure on his wound; they patch up their differences. As spiders close in on them, Lila's headlights suddenly shine at them, allowing the siblings to escape with her. They are spared by a spider blocking their path, and Kaleb opens the garage door.

Later, Manon and Lila tearfully watch the suburb collapse, while Kaleb buries a shoebox containing a childhood photo of him and Jordy in the woods. Kaleb takes a spider crawling on his shoulder in the palm of his hand and blows it away.

Production
On 15 February 2023, Variety reported that principal photography on a French horror film entitled Vermin was underway in Paris, due to be completed on 3 March 2023. The magazine noted that French short film director Sébastien Vaniček would mark his feature directorial debut with Vermin (which he co-wrote with Florent Bernard and would feature real spiders), and that "local up-and-coming actors" Théo Christine, Finnegan Oldfield, Jérôme Niel, Sofia Lesaffre, and Lisa Nyarko had been cast. Vaniček told Screen Rant that he had already cast Christine when he and Bernard were writing the script. Vaniček eschewed references to other horror films in favor of originality, although he cited 2015's Green Room as a major influence on his film as well as acknowledged "obvious" similarities to 1979's Alien (of which he is a fan). In order to pitch the film, he had to bring not only the script but also a large book of concept art for the project. The French daily Le Parisien noted that exterior scenes were shot on location at the Arènes de Picasso in Noisy-le-Grand. Vaniček considered the film "very personal", in that it "depicts the French suburbs [he knows]", drawing on his own experience living in such tight-knit communities while also coming to terms with how they are perceived in French urban areas. According to Vaniček, he could not understand why would suburbans be discriminated merely on the basis of being a part of these communities, which were seen as crime-ridden and unpleasant in general. He saw this issue as an opportunity to make a creature film exploring people's irrational fears through spiders, the fear of which he attributes to the way they move and look, finding this idea ripe for social commentary on xenophobia. He explained at Screen Rant:

"You have this interesting parallel with spiders, because spiders are judged for their appearances, and then people from the suburbs are judged for where they come from. So, I immediately had this parallel, and I knew that I would treat my characters like the spiders, they are in the same building, and they will have to survive. And surviving means that you have a battle between these two, because people try to kill them, and they have to defend themselves from their predator."

Vaniček had the benefit of combining real spiders with CG spiders because the film was shot in chronological order. Two hundred giant huntsman spiders were used, which were then digitally enlarged. The natural behavior of the spiders presented unique benefits and challenges for filming. When placed in the open, the spiders would run to find hiding spots, but tire after a short time. Vaniček would film them running in these short bursts, then after they tired out, could place them where he wanted and film more static shots while they rested. Because the script called for scenes in which the cast was to communicate with spiders, actresses Lisa Nyarko and Sofia Lesaffre had to conquer their fear of spiders at the beginning of the shoot. Similarly, Vaniček said he took close-up shots of the spiders with the intention of showing how not frightening but "complex and beautiful" they are, whose aggression in the film stems purely from survival instinct as a result of being taken away from their habitat and being attacked by humans.

Release
The French magazine Première noted that the film would be theatrically released in its native France on 27 December 2023. It also reported that the film was attended by 200,000 audiences during its theatrical run and nominated for two César Awards, making it a commercially successful feature directorial debut for Sébastien Vaniček. According to Box Office Mojo, global box office sales for the film have totaled $2.4 million, with $1.9 million of sales coming from its native France.

American streaming service Shudder acquired the film for the United States and Canada as well as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland ahead of its premiere at the 80th Venice International Film Festival; it began streaming on Shudder under the title Infested, on 26 April 2024. At the Venice Film Festival, it was the International Critics' Week section's closing feature. It was screened in competition at Fantastic Fest 2023, winning Best Picture and Best Director, and was later nominated for Best Motion Picture and awarded a Special Jury Prize at the 56th Sitges Film Festival. It was screened at the 2024 Overlook Film Festival.

Reception
According to Screen Rant, the film garnered "overwhelmingly positive reviews for delivering compelling thrills and developing human characters" but polarized audiences over the visuals, which they compared unfavorably with those of 1990's Arachnophobia and 2007's The Mist. Stephen King, the author of The Mist source novella, published a capsule review on Twitter calling Infested "scary, gross, well made".

Variety critic Dennis Harvey found the film entertaining and scary, albeit "conceptually unremarkable". He praised the performances, particularly that of Théo Christine, attributing these to the director Sébastien Vaniček's acerbic dialogue and human drama. Likewise, Harvey said the filmmakers managed to combine several genres with "taut balance" and deliver a "first-rate" production on a seemingly tight budget. Ultimately, he said the film should be a must-watch to horror fans notwithstanding its quite "anticlimactic" finale. At Slant Magazine, Mark Hanson said the film should satisfy genre fans owing to the precision of the creature effects, but was himself displeased by its conventional narrative as well as sense of urgency to draw tension among audiences at the expense of character development. He said the film's social commentary was offset by its stock characters, making it less impactful than intended.

Thematically, the film highlights social situations in the French suburbs such as class and racial discrimination and police brutality with its depiction of harsh treatment of its characters by both the authorities and the government. Film critics also likened the police lockdown to those during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting themes of quarantine and isolation.

Accolades
The film was nominated for Best First Feature Film and Best Visual Effects at the 49th César Awards.