Infested (2023)

Infested is an incredibly effective horror movie because it understands that the scariest part of a spider infestation isn't necessarily seeing a giant spider. It's knowing one could be anywhere. The film takes a relatively simple setup and uses an apartment building to turn that fear into something relentless. I had seen the movie before watching it again for this review, and it held up every bit as well as I remembered.

What makes it work is the escalation. The story gets moving quickly, but it also takes enough time to establish the residents and their relationships. I actually cared about these characters. That matters because once the infestation starts spreading, every new threat has some weight behind it. It isn't simply a series of people stumbling into spider attacks. You have this group trying to navigate an increasingly dangerous building while everything around them gets worse.

I loved how the filmmakers used the location. The hallways, apartments, vents, and other confined spaces become places you don't want anyone to enter. Even when nothing is crawling across the screen, you're scanning the background and waiting for something to move. It's a great example of creating tension through staging rather than relying entirely on loud noises. When the film does reveal the spiders, the effects are impressive and often genuinely unsettling. They move in ways that make the encounters feel disturbingly real.

There's a little bit of the feeling of [REC] or Quarantine in the way the building becomes a trap, but using spiders gives Infested an identity of its own. The creature horror is nasty, and the movie keeps finding ways to make the situation feel worse without losing the main story. I was impressed by how well it sustained that level of anxiety.

It's also a movie I'd recommend with a warning. If spiders are already a major fear for you, this will probably be a rough watch. For horror fans who want an intense creature feature with good performances and a story that makes you care, though, I think Infested is excellent. It's the sort of movie I'd happily add to my collection.

I survived Infested, and I'm counting that as an accomplishment. I hate spiders. Not just enormous movie spiders, either. Real spiders are bad enough, and that's what makes a movie like this so much worse for me. You can tell yourself the story is made up, but spiders actually exist. After watching this, I wasn't even happy about having to go outside in the dark.

I will admit the acting is good, and the movie does a good job making you understand the people who live in the apartment building. Under different circumstances I might have appreciated that a lot more. I was mostly too busy watching every corner of the screen to make sure I knew where the next spider was going to appear. When somebody reached into a space or got close to something they shouldn't have, I was practically begging them not to do it. Of course, they couldn't hear me.

The spiders themselves looked horribly convincing. Sometimes the scary part was how fast one moved, and other times it was just realizing how many of them could be hiding somewhere. The building gets more and more claustrophobic, and I felt like there was nowhere anyone could go without running into something awful. Even when the camera wasn't showing a spider, I kept expecting one. I was tense pretty much the entire time.

It didn't help that I was watching a French movie with subtitles. I know a lot of people don't mind that, but I already have to concentrate when I'm watching something with subtitles. Trying to read while also making sure nothing was going to crawl out of the corner of the screen was not my idea of a relaxing evening.

I can understand why someone who loves creature features would think this movie is really good. I can recognize what it did well, and I even cared about the people in danger. None of that made me want to keep watching spiders. There were too many moments when I was saying no out loud, and I wasn't joking. I'm glad I made it through the whole thing. Now I would like to never watch it again, and possibly never see the poster again either.