The Scare Salon

If you’re in any way freaked out by spiders, though, you obviously might want to give this one a pass, because there are a lot of the little buggers scurrying around, and some of them are huge. I actually think spiders are pretty cool and beautiful, so I wasn’t too bothered, but arachnophobes be warned.

Vaniček has stated that he wanted to add another layer of depth to his killer-spider movie, utilizing a setting similar to where he grew up to explore themes of xenophobia, essentially drawing a parallel between the trapped, multi-ethnic residents of the building and the “invading” spiders who are just trying to survive in an environment they’re not native to. The critters in the movie were a decent-looking blend of real and CGI, as the real spiders (which were giant huntsmans) were digitally blown up to larger proportions when necessary.

There’s a cold open set somewhere in a Middle Eastern desert, where a group of dudes are searching the barren landscape, presumably for the spiders which will feature so prominently in the rest of the movie. One of them finds a prime-looking spider hole under a rock, throws some poison gas down there, and gets some instant karma in the form of a big ol’ arachnid launching itself out of the hole right at him. We see that these spiders are exceedingly venomous, as the guy begins dying horribly pretty much right away, at which point his compatriots capture some of the errant spiders in plastic containers, then hack their buddy to death with a machete to put him out of his misery.

We then jump to a tower block-type building in suburban Paris. This is something of an ensemble cast, but our main protagonist is a young man named Kaleb (Théo Christine), who lives with his sister Manon (Lisa Nyarko) in an apartment once owned by their mother, who has passed away. The two are constantly at odds; Manon is busy doing renovations on the flat and waking Kaleb up at inconvenient hours, and she also has a tendency to turn the lights and heaters off in the tanks containing his menagerie of exotic bugs and reptiles. Kaleb, on the other hand, is a good, honorable guy, but also trades in black-market sneakers and (possibly) stolen goods, and hangs out with thieves and ostensible drug dealers.

Kaleb visits a store to buy earrings for his beloved upstairs neighbor, who is having a going-away party because she’s moving out. While he’s there, he asks the owner Ali (who is also his friend) to look at the “good stuff” in the back instead of the cheap shit he sells out front. Kaleb finds some nice earrings back there, but is also intrigued by a spider in a small container among all the other critters in the back; as I mentioned, Kaleb loves exotic animals, and even though it’s technically illegal to own or trade in them, he really wants this little creature for his collection. He buys the spider and takes her back to his apartment to meet his other pets.

When he gets his new acquisition home, he talks sweetly to her and prepares a shoe box with soft tissues as a temporary shelter until he can get her permanent tank set up. He then has to run out on an errand.

As you might have guessed, as soon as Kaleb goes out, the plucky little spider wastes no time chewing right through the side of the cardboard box and escaping into the wider world. That’s gratitude for ya, I guess. When Kaleb returns, he’s heartbroken to find that she’s absconded, and looks high and low for her, finding nothing but an ominous cocoon she left on the back of a picture frame. Uh oh.

Shortly afterward, Kaleb delivers a distinctive pair of sneakers to his cranky neighbor Toumani (Ike Zacsongo-Joseph), and again as you might have guessed, the spider was hiding in the shoe. When Toumani puts the sneakers on, he gets bitten and dies a gruesome, goopy death, which is later discovered by residents and the police.

Once the cause of Toumani’s death is established as the result of a bite from a very venomous and ridiculously fast-reproducing species of spider, the authorities lock down the building to prevent the spiders infesting the entire neighborhood, thus trapping the residents inside with millions of dangerous critters who are not only deadly but can also grow to the size of a large dog if need be.

Kaleb and his sister Manon, joined by Manon’s friend Lila (Sofia Lesaffre), her boyfriend Jordy (Finnegan Oldfield), who used to be Kaleb’s best friend and fellow exotic animal lover until they had a falling out, and Kaleb’s other friend and bike thief Mathys (Jérôme Niel) obviously don’t want to stay in a building that’s quickly filling up with aggressive and venomous spiders. They try to convince the other residents to join them in trying to get out past the barricades and cops, but most of the tenants are older and think they should just stay put and wait for help to arrive. The younger, Kaleb-led gang knows how bullshit that attitude is, though, so they attempt to battle their way through the armies of spiders to get out of the building.

The set-up and execution of this one is pretty standard as creature features go, but it’s fantastically tense and well-acted, although I admit it took me a while to warm to its characters, who initially seem somewhat abrasive. Once I was sucked into their drama, however, I was all in, and I even admit that there was one scene later in the movie where one character is being slowly devoured by the spiders and his helpless friends can do nothing but listen to his agonized screaming through the air ducts that legit made me tear up because of the way the other characters were reacting. It was a horrific scene, and probably the best in the movie in terms of emotional impact.

If you’re in the mood for some good old-fashioned spider mayhem with a side of poignant character drama (as well as a significant dollop of grue), then Infested should be on your watch list. It’s on Shudder and Amazon Prime as of late July 2024, so check it out if it sounds like your cup of pesticide.

Until next time, keep it creepy (and crawly), my friends.