Infested Director & Co-Writer Sébastien Vaniček Talks Arachnophobia, Making A Rare French Horror Movie & Evil Dead

The spider-based horror genre continues to enjoy a creepy resurgence with Infested. Hailing from French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček in his feature directorial debut, the movie comes at a time in which arachnids are finding a new life on screen, releasing near the somewhat comedically-driven Australian-American production Sting, which centered on a troubled young girl befriending an alien spider, only for it to go on a brutal murder spree in her rundown apartment building.

Infested, entitled Vermines in its original release, centers on Kaleb, an exotic-animal-obsessed young man who lives in a crime-heavy area of France and is trying to keep things afloat for him and his sister in their mother’s old apartment where they grew up. After Kaleb comes across a unique spider and adds it to his collection, he quickly comes to learn that it is a rare, deadly species from the Middle East that also breeds quickly and can grow to human-level sizes. When the spiders quickly begin overtaking his apartment building, Kaleb, his sister and their friends must quickly find a way to escape and prevent the arachnids from spreading.

Théo Christine (Suprêmes) leads the ensemble Infested cast alongside Finnegan Oldfield (Final Cut), Jérôme Niel (Smoking Causes Coughing), Sofia Lesaffre (Les Misérables) and Lisa Nyarko. Having a handful of shorts under his belt prior to the movie, the horror-thriller proves to be a remarkable debut effort for Vaniček, providing plenty of stylish chills as well as some meaningful character development and social commentary.

In honor of the movie’s Shudder premiere, Screen Rant interviewed Sébastien Vaniček to discuss Infested, how the general sense of arachnophobia inspired the movie’s creation, his desire to create a deeper story than just a creature feature, mixing CGI with practical spiders, and his upcoming approach to the next Evil Dead movie.

The Concept Of Arachnophobia Intrigued Vaniček & Inspired Infested

While at the heart of many movies throughout the years, spiders have rarely been the focus of genuine horror movies, lest they leave those who live with arachnophobia completely unnerved. For Vaniček, it was this concept that led him to make Infested, sharing a similarity to Kaleb in understanding the non-deadly beauty of the arachnids and even finding a unique parallel between them and his characters:

Sébastien Vaniček: From you, from the persons who are arachnophobic, because I always wanted to understand why. I’m always interested in why people are afraid of something. And what’s really interesting with spiders is that you have no reason, because they are not dangerous for humans. They will never kill you. The only person who dies from spider bites is a person who is allergic to spiders. I think that, in the end, they are things that are judged because of the shape.

We don’t like that they have eight legs, and they can move fast, and they can go from this way to this way, they can jump. And that’s xenophobia. You judge someone for what they look like. So that’s what the starting point was, because I had really interesting parlays with suburbians in France. They have a really bad reputation, because suburbs in France are bad neighborhoods where there is criminality and everything. So, people who come from suburbs tend to have bad reputations, that’s the cliché.

You have this interesting parallel with spiders, because spiders are judged for their appearances, and then people from the suburbs are judged for where they come from. So, I immediately had this parallel, and I knew that I would treat my characters like the spiders, they are in the same building, and they will have to survive. And surviving means that you have a battle between these two, because people try to kill them, and they have to defend themselves from their predator.

And above that, I wanted to have the best first feature movie possible, to have a tense movie, to have a movie that makes you feel a lot of things. That’s what I aimed for during 15 years of doing short movies with my friends. I didn’t go to a cinema school or anything, I just did movies with my friends, and I was always like, “Yeah, we have to be intense, let’s work on sound.” I really had to work hard on sound, because I want people to feel things through their body, I want my movies to be experienced by the body. So, I put everything in a shaker, and that’s how Infested came out.

Théo Christine Was Cast While The Movie Was Still Being Written

Where most filmmakers wait until they’ve finished crafting a script before building their cast, Vaniček took a uniquely different approach in bringing on Théo Christine to play Kaleb while Infested was still “in the early process of writing.” The co-writer/director praised his lead star for everything he brought to movie, particularly given he understood Christine would need to “take the movie on his back“:

Sébastien Vaniček: Yeah, Théo came really in the early process of the writing, because I knew his work, and I knew I needed someone who would have the shoulders to bear the movie, to take the movie on his back. Because he’s the main character, and at the beginning, you hate him, but we will start to understand him. It will be really hard for Théo to be a nice character for the audience, because he has a bad reputation, he acts badly, speaks badly, and things like that.

But he’s such a good actor that you understand all the failures that he has. So, it was just a thing of balancing black and white in the character. And he’s also the flesh of the movie, he is the movie, he’s everything, he has to be the image of the movie. So, I needed to have this face and this body, it was really, really important to me. And above all, I wanted to work with a new generation of actor. We are the same age, we wanted to do the same movie, we wanted to root things in France, because the first goal of this movie was to have a big release in France.

Now that I’m in the US, I’m really happy, but the first goal was to hit hard in France, because we never have genre films, we never have horror movies, we never have spider movies, this was the first time. So, we wanted to do the best movie possible, so I needed to work with the best human beings possible. They were really, really good actors, but it’s not enough, you have to put everything in this movie, and these guys, we had a contract with each other. “I will do my best to do the best movie possible, and you will give me everything that you have during a short period of time.” And that’s what they did. They never complained, they put everything in this movie, so you can feel it when you watch it.

Vaniček Found A Unique Way To Blend CGI WIth Practical For The Spiders (Even Without A Marvel-Level Budget)

While most prior spider-based horror movies either use special effects to create gargantuan arachnids or practical effects for normal-sized creepy crawlers, Vaniček took a uniquely different approach to depicting Infested‘s spiders by using both. Because the movie filmed in chronological order, he was able to use real spiders on the set for the beginning of the story, but even then, ensured that the CGI team were on set in order to “make the CGI believable” by studying the creatures:

Sébastien Vaniček: Yeah, we were lucky to work in a chronological way, so at the beginning of movie, the spiders are real, because they have a little more shape. And yeah, I had the CGI team with me all the time, so we talked a lot when we were shooting the spiders, and studying them really, really closely. The legs, how they’d behave, why they’d go here, why they’d go there, how they move.

We had a lot of shots with them, so the CGI team was able to work with the shots and base their shots on real ones. And that’s why, I think, with the idea of putting moving spiders in the dark, that made the CGI believable, even though we didn’t have enough money to make it like the Marvel movies, and intense, impressive CGI. I think the combination of these two ideas made the CGI work.

With these real spiders on the set, the movie’s cast did ultimately have to interact with them for certain sequences. Humorously recalling how it was “easy with the guys” and “another story with the girls“, the filmmaker praised everyone for working through any fears they had to film the movie:

Sébastien Vaniček: I don’t want to be cliché or anything, but it was easy with the guys, and it was another story with the girls. So Lisa and Sofia were a bit afraid of spiders at the beginning of the shoot, but when they understood the statements that we have in the movie, that you can’t be afraid of something you don’t know. And that you have to know things in order not to be violent in front of them. They started to want to understand them, and at the end of the movie, they were able to take a spider in their hands. So, I think that they are healed from the phobia, but it was an intense way to heal. [Chuckles]

Vaniček Is Particularly Proud Of One Infested Shot (Which Was In Every Draft Of The Script)

As the infestation of spiders grows larger and the stakes rise in the movie, Vaniček nicely finds a way to keep the direction feeling claustrophobic and frenetic to line up with his characters’ mindset and the overall pace of the movie. But for the filmmaker, there is one shot in particular that he remains especially proud of that had been present in every draft since the beginning:

Sébastien Vaniček: I will not be original, I think it’s the hallway shot, because it’s one of the shots that I wrote in the script, it was there from the beginning. It’s an idea when we were starting to ask ourselves, “Okay, well how we will shoot that?”

It was there since the beginning, when I was alone in a room writing the movie, I’m like, “Yeah, if I have a 20-meter hallway, I will show the whole way, the 20 meters, I will do a backward traveling of 20 meters, and I will make it upside down. I will put the floor on the ceiling, and I want people to lose their reference, and I want for them to be like spiders. Spiders don’t have a floor or ceiling. I want you to put everything into this inner shot, and to show that that’s a game level.”

You have to go from point A to point B, you will have obstacles, and you have a ticking clock. So, you have really basic rules, but I will film it in a really intense way in order for the audience to understand the rules, but to be afraid. It was all these ideas together that made me want to have this money shot. We took about five hours to have the perfect shot, but it was really important, and I think that’s one of my favorite shots in the movie.

Vaniček Wasn’t Aware Of Shudder Prior To The Movie Being Picked Up (But Is Thrilled For The Platform It Gives Infested)

After becoming a hit in its home country of France, Infested will be getting a North American release on Shudder, the horror-based streaming platform. When asked about the initial acquisition, Vaniček admitted he had not heard about them prior to it, but once he learned more about Shudder, he was thrilled at the opportunity, though hopes more than horror genre fans give the movie a watch:

Sébastien Vaniček: To be honest, I didn’t know about Shudder, I knew about IFC. When we were in Canada in 2023 selling the movie in an international way, I was in the editing process. We went for five days in Cannes, and we had sellers in Cannes trying to sell for all around the world, and for the US and the UK and everything. They told me, “Yeah we have IFC,” and I knew IFC, because I knew Neon, A24 and IFC are the three bests in the world.

So, I was like, “Yeah, we have one of the best, that’s so cool.” And they told me, “Yeah, it will be on Shudder, it’s a platform,” and I was like “Yeah, let’s go, it’s cool.” People who are big fans of horror movies can go and watch it. The only thing is that I hope that this movie is not just [seen as] a horror movie, I hope that people who are not just horror fans will be interested in it. In France, we were lucky enough to be a really big hit.

People who don’t like horror movies came to see Infested, because you come to see characters, you can see a story that’s not just about spiders. So yeah, I hope people will watch it, all kinds of people, a wide audience. And I’m sure that it’s something that can happen, because it’s on a platform everybody can see, so I think it’s a perfect home for Infested.

Sam Raimi Has Given Vaniček The Reins To Break All The Rules For The Next Evil Dead

In the time between releasing Infested in France and its Shudder premiere, Vaniček has already landed his next major project in the form of the next installment in the Evil Dead franchise. The filmmaker is incredibly grateful for franchise creator/producer Sam Raimi to have brought him, an indie horror director, on to take the reins much like Fede Álvarez and Lee Cronin before him, especially with the creative freedom to break all the rules:

Sébastien Vaniček: You’re right, I think that Ghost House, and Sam Raimi and his team are the only ones in Hollywood who give a chance to new filmmakers to do such big movies. Because when you see Fede and Lee, they come from nowhere, you know? Lee did a small movie in Ireland, and Fede had short movies, and they give us this huge franchise, and they trusted them.

And it’s basically the same for me, because I did this small French horror movie, and they’ve seen it, and they are so precise in their comments when they see a movie, especially Sam, who asked me how many mics did I use in the bathroom scene, and things like that. They’re really big geeks of cinema, and I can identify myself to Sam Raimi, because it’s like, yeah, he was a 20-year-old guy with a camera in the forest, and he wanted to do the most crazy shots, and kind of like that, I did short movies for about 15 years with my friends, and when I was able to do infested, I was like, “Okay, I will do the most important camera work I can do.”

I wanted to do that, so we understand each other. So, they came up asking what would be my Evil Dead. That’s what caught me, because you have such freedom with them. They are not like, “Yeah, we want to do that” or “We have this character”, they didn’t give me a scenario and tell me, “Yeah, can you do that?” They just were like, “What would be your Evil Dead? What would be your story, your characters and everything?” That’s really rare in Hollywood, so I was like, “Well, that’s something that I want to do.”

I came up with, like, 15 pages and gave them these 15 pages, and I tend to respect the rules of Evil Dead, but they asked me to break the rules. So there is something about, yeah, I love the franchise, but I will not be able to do what Lee or Fede did, or even Sam during his time. I told them, “If I’m the director of this Evil Dead, I will do that, or this or that. “And they were like, “Yeah, let’s go.” They are really open to new ideas, and that’s, I think, what’s really powerful with the franchise is that you will have so many different movies.

And it’s such an opportunity for young filmmakers to do intense movies, and interesting movies. So, I can’t answer your question in telling you precisely what will be my ideas, because obviously, I can’t say anything. But I will do my best to have a mean movie, and a movie that will hurt the audience, because the goal of Evil Dead is to be hurt.

When asked where in the overarching Evil Dead timeline his new movie will be, Vaniček is more tight-lipped, explaining that because they’re “in the early process of the writing“, there are still “so many questions” they have to answer, but assures he and his Infested co-writer Florent Bernard are hard at work on the project:

Sébastien Vaniček: I would love to answer this question, but we are in the early process of the writing, so we have so many questions. We just wrote stuff with my co-writer, it’s the same co-writer I wrote Infested with, so I’m working with my team, I’m really glad. But we are in the process of building our story, our characters and everything, and we are chatting with each other. There’s so many ideas coming from everywhere. For the moment, we are in the sandbox, and we haven’t started to build a castle, we are just gathering the best sand, and as soon as I have the best sand, I will start to build a castle.

About Infested

Director Sébastien Vanicek makes his feature film debut with a story that follows 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. It only takes a moment for it to escape and reproduce, turning the whole place into a dreadful web trap. Starring Théo Christine (Suprêmes), Finnegan Oldfield (Final Cut), Jérôme Niel (Smoking Causes Coughing), Sofia Lesaffre (Les Misérables) and Lisa Nyarko.

Source: Screen Rant Plus