Director: Sébastien Vanicek
Year: 2024
Country: France/USA
Alternate Titles: Vermines
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Looking for a special present, a man decides to help get over his lot in life by caring for an exotic spider to go along with the rest of the animals in his collection, but when it becomes apparent that the spider has escaped and begun reproducing more voracious creatures like it must get away alive.
Review:
This was a disappointing and somewhat underwhelming genre effort. The main part that works for this one is the highly intriguing and at times outright terrifying work of the spider being let loose in the community. With a fantastic opening giving the kind of stellar example of the ferocity and deadliness of the species, there’s quite a lot to like with the gradual reveal of something loose in the building as their lives are interrupted by the discovery of dead residents, strange animal attacks, or the presence of strange webs found all over the building. The series of scenes here involving the swarm of ravenous creatures appearing out of the cracks of the building and attacking in basements, kitchens, bathrooms, or just about anywhere else throughout here while also given enough storyline context about surviving past the extermination techniques due to their rapidly-procreation style or invulnerability to any tactics employed against them. With the stellar pace present that keeps them far more intent in the second half so these terrifying scenes can come about at a frantic clip, these are what manage to provide its best moments.
What holds it back is, unfortunately, everything else that transpires here. Most of that is the extremely sluggish and generally uninteresting first half that spends far too much time on the residents of the apartment and the go-nowhere lives they lead. Featuring a highly original series of urban stereotypes involving drug pushers, counterfeiters, sexual miscreants, or other forms of deviance that takes place in this kind of hoodlum environment, these all create a simple enough setup that provides all the necessary build-up to get to know the group but it’s all cliches and uninteresting as a result. Very little of this makes the group stand out from any other community of down-on-their-luck individuals in a low-rent squalor and fearing for their lives due to the company they keep, stuck in a situation that only gets worse with the inclusion of the spiders here. That causes this to be a rather sluggish affair without offering any kind of genre work or interest during this point so it takes far longer than it needs to get to the spider action and thus the running time is inordinately longer than it needs to be, bringing this down overall.
Overview: **.5/5
A rather fun creature feature when it focuses on that, the fact that this one stumbles with the other aspects keeps this one down only for a special ausience. This one is mainly for the most ardent creature feature fanatics or those that appreciate the type of content here ignoring the flaws presented while other type of genre fans or those turned off by the negatives should heed caution with this one.
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