Kaleb (Théo Christine) fends off despair over his mother's recent death, his antagonistic relationship with his sister, Manon (Lisa Nyarko), and the low-grade but constant grind of poverty, by buying rare and exotic invertebrates with the dream to open his own vivarium someday. One of these purchases, a venomous spider with no provenance, escapes into Kaleb's run-down apartment building, filled with mainly immigrants. It's not long until the spiders take over.
This is a decent creature feature, especially if you have fond memories of watching Arachnophobia in the 90s. There are spiders everywhere and it looks like a lot of them are real with a mix of CGI for some behaviors and size. There are some jump scares, mostly of the "small thing that suddenly moves FASTER THAN EXPECTED towards you" variety. If you've ever been surprised by a spider in the shower, you know the feeling.
But this isn't really a movie about spiders. It's very much a movie about reacting to the pandemic, especially if you are poor and non-white. After the first death, masked officials order all the residents to lock themselves inside their apartments and quarantine the building, blocking the exits and refusing to allow anyone to leave containment. Which is not what you do with an infestation, but is 100% what you do with a pathogen.
So if you liked District B-13 but wished there were spiders doing parkour instead of people, Infested is currently streaming on Shudder, which I get as an add-on with Amazon Prime.
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