2023’s Best Horror with 95% Tomatometer Drops on Shudder This Week

Fear of insects is one of the most common phobias that has been regularly exploited by filmmakers throughout the decades. There are truly scary movies about flies, beetles, and wasps, but most often the source of menace in such horror and thriller films is spiders.

34 years ago, Frank Marshall made a cult film on the subject with the telling title Arachnophobia, and now, on April 26th, a new film drops on Shudder that will vie for the place of the main horror project about spiders – Infested by debutant Sebastien Vanicek, which was shown last year at the Venice Film Festival. In addition to the general mood, the films have something else in common: real live spiders took part in the filming of both.

What is Infested About?

Infested begins with the usual horror-movie approach: someone arrives in a new house and faces unexpected obstacles that prevent them from living a calm and measured life. But in the case of Vanicek, it's not people, but spiders.

Discovered by unknown hunters somewhere in the desert, the spiders lose their familiar habitat and find themselves trapped in small plastic containers. One of these boxes falls into the hands of 30-year-old Kaleb, who carefully brings the spider into the apartment and offers to make it feel at home.

The spider turns out to be a female and immediately takes advantage of the offer, placing cocoons of offspring in the corners. However, the other residents of the house are not pleased to have such neighbors. In response to the aggression, the spiders have no choice but to start a war for living space.

In a matter of hours, an apartment building turns into a battlefield. In the basement, on the stairs, in the vents, and even in the walls of the house, poisonous eight-legged creatures multiply by the minute. They don't seem to mind sharing space with humans, but the latter's desire to get rid of the spiders makes any communication impossible. Somewhere outside, the police are already cordoning off the area and declaring a quarantine.

Finding themselves isolated, a group of main characters, only two of whom are not afraid of spiders, decide to break out through an underground parking garage, but to do so they have to walk two dozen floors covered in cobwebs.

Infested Is Coming to Shudder Very Soon

So if you are afraid of spiders, Infested may be a real test for you, but everyone else will just have to wait until April 26th to enjoy one of the most unusual horror movies of the past year on Shudder.