What Are You Hiding?

April 4, 2024

French Horror Film Finds Low-Rent Opportunity for Venomous Spiders in INFESTED

INFESTED (aka VERMINES) is a French horror film that follows a young man named Kaleb, who is about to turn 30 and has never been lonelier. He’s fighting with his sister over a matter of inheritance and has cut ties with his best friend. Fascinated by exotic animals, he finds a venomous spider in a bazaar and brings it back to his flat.

Somehow, Kaleb’s His fascination with these exotic creatures leads him to a venomous discovery — the spider that soon turns his flat into a terrifying webbed prison, while residents of the rundown French apartment building battle against an army of deadly, rapidly reproducing spiders.

The film is scored by Douglas Cavanna, known for an the short films CROCS (2018), AEMETH (2018), and others, and newcomer Xavier Caux, with Etienne Colin serving as score mixer and Florian Thouzellier as music supervisor.

The visually striking buildings where the action is set have not been created for the movie; these are the Picasso arenas in Noisy-le-Grand, near Paris, designed by architect Manuel Núñez Yanowsky in the 80s. The movie was shot in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, next to Paris, from January to early March 2022. Writer/director Sébastien Vanicek really wanted to show the low income housing community in France differently; according to him, whenever it’s shown in movies, it’s either a drama, with drug dealing and all that, or a corny comedy. His perception is that in real life, it’s mostly humming along just fine, with only a few issues here and there. In visualizing the environment, Vanicek was led to spiders infesting the low income housing areas. Whenever spiders are spotted, they’re swatted. Everyone in the story (people as well as the spiders) are treated like vermin by society, so the title came to him naturally.

INFESTED weaves its eerie tale in the US on Shudder April 26, following its debut last September at the Venice Film Festival. Starring Théo Christine, Finnegan Oldfield, Jérôme Niel, Sofia Lesaffre, and Lisa Nyarko.

Watch the official trailer: