Infested – A Claustrophobic Spider Horror Thriller (Early Review)

Infested (Vermines) revolves around Kaleb (Christine), a lonely, nearly 30-year old man currently fighting with his sister over their inheritance and has just cut ties with his best friend. Passionate about exotic animals, he comes home one day with an unusual looking spider and after placing it in a damaged box, it quickly gets out. Soon Kaleb’s underprivileged apartment complex is thrown into chaos as the deadly spiders multiply. Placed under quarantine by the police, the residents of this apartment building are forced to survive in lockdown alongside the terrifying spiders that are becoming bigger and bigger and growing rapidly in numbers.

Infested is a highly effective, squirm-inducing, and genuinely creepy film that will surely get under the skin of audiences. For those suffering from arachnophobia or who are deathly afraid of spiders, this will push them to their absolute limit. There are a fair share of intense sequences here which will push that general unease depending on how audiences happen to feel about spiders or claustrophobic environments crowded with spiders and draped by webs. The film does a good job at keeping its set pieces feeling fresh and no two sequences feel similar to each other, which was a nice surprise. The overall tension and sense of dread grows at the same rate as the spiders as the film never leaves audiences a moment where they feel safe, even during its quieter and more character driven moments. The spiders themselves look good as well, using a nice mix of practical effects and CGI. While their CGI aspects are easy to spot, it doesn’t take away from thm. On the other side, the practical spider effects are cool and unsettling.

Though in terms of performances, the film doesn’t truly have a standout. However, the entire cast does well, making audiences care enough to want to see their characters survive. Having a similar structure and setting as films like Rec and its English language remake Quarantine, it never feels like it’s directly copying them, and the spider angle keeps things fresh and unpredictable. Between this and the recently released Sting, a film that also features a giant spider terrorizing and murdering residents in an apartment complex, this one is the better of the two and the one that will be better remembered. That being said, both are very different from one another. Both films go for two very different things, and have vastly different tones, that compliment each other nicely. Those looking for a spider horror movie double feature will do no wrong pairing this and Sting.

There isn’t anything overtly wrong with Infested, but it does suffer from some minor issues not uncommon to modern horror films. Featuring a slow build up before getting to the spider side of things, normally that wouldn’t be bad, but the downside its that audiences don’t really get to know much about its characters outside of the basics which makes the time spent with them feel dragged out and bloated. Offering plenty of questionable decision making throughout, those bad decisions can be felt the most during a frustrating key moment in the film’s third act.

In the end, Infested is likely the scariest movie of the entire year thus far and continues this year’s recent winning streak in the horror genre. For those who are terrified of spiders, this film might actually go too far but for anyone else, especially horror fans, it comes highly recommended once it hits Shudder this coming weekend. While it may fall just short of greatness, it is definitely worth a watch and for those haven’t seen Sting yet, they should watch them back-to-back, just to see which film they prefer.

still courtesy of Shudder

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/