Vermin - A Praga

Podemos contar nos dedos de uma mão, com um pouco de tolerância, em duas, os filmes de terror com aranhas de qualidade realizados em mais de cem anos de cinema. E fico contente por ver que esta aracno-viagem francesa está agora entre eles. Mas a experiência depende muito da extensão da sua aracnofobia, porque não se trata de personagens simpáticas ou de cenários bonitos. Em vez disso, passa-se num prédio pré-fabricado numa urbanização social francesa, e os seus heróis são adolescentes rebeldes cuja sobrevivência só começa a ser importante para nós no último quarto do filme. Mas o bloco de apartamentos tem um desenho circular com padrão de teias de aranha, as aranhas tornam-se cada vez mais numerosas e parecem vivas (num filme de género francês feito por jovens entusiastas!), e mais do que uma cena vai provocar arrepios com a intensidade dos sustos. A quarta estrela vai para a experiência de cinema com um bom sistema de som. [Sitges FF] (12/10/2023)

Infested can most easily be described as a mix of Arachnophobia, REC, and Evil Dead Rise, and it's really no wonder Sébastien Vaniček was put in charge of the next addition to the latter franchise. This debut is an instant ticket to the premier horror league, managing to make a perfectly crafted, very intense film that doesn't have much competition within the spider horror genre. Especially, as long as the creatures are small and nimble, it worked for me 100% and I twitched with very high frequency. I don't even want to imagine how much better this film would have worked if it had more likeable characters that you cared about. The protagonists are, for me at least, the biggest stumbling block, especially the fact that their characters imply some very questionable decisions, which at one point exceeded my tolerance level. There is a thing one of the characters does about 15 minutes before the end that wouldn't have been done by the most anti-system asshole at that point, there's just no justification for it. It's exactly the moment when, as a viewer, I stop "experiencing" what's happening on the screen and start saying WTF instead. (05/03/2024)

Sébastien Vaniček and his instant ticket to the A-Horror League. I'm gonna go give out prizes, because this is where history is made. So Vaniček made a dream debut (right on the lines of the recent successful debutants like Robert Eggers, Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, Zach Cregger), the best spider horror film of all time (it's quite funny that the previous king is already 30 years, Arachnophobia), kicked off this year's French wave and at the same time made the best horror film of the year – no one could ask for a better way to start. Whether Infested will be dethroned by the new Alien or Nosferatu at the end of the year is another matter, but until then it can enjoy the pedestal merrily. And now for the film. After a long time, I experienced very uncomfortable feelings with horror, and since ghosts and demons don't do anything to me, spiders as a real evil definitely had an effect. The housing estates of the French ghetto evokes an interesting atmosphere in itself, you don’t get to really form much of a relationship with the characters but that didn't bother me. The craftsmanship is excellent and once it gets going, it really is a spider atmospheric hell crammed with jump-scares like Sam Raimi's Drag me to Hell, and I twitched along decently (I also praise the aptly chosen musical score!). Admittedly, it got more intense as the spiders got smaller, but even the big ones had something going for them – that's where the CGI came in handy. It's a bit marred by the ending, I was expecting a bigger carnage, the mass battle spiders vs cops was over too quickly for my taste, and the whole thing ends quite hastily – I could have easily managed 20 minutes more – but these are minor flaws in the beauty of a film that is born once every three decades. Anyone who doesn't appreciate that is an arrogant scumbag and an enemy of the state and me. 9/10. (28/04/2024)

A very weak, generic genre film. A group of young adults are trapped in a spider's web along with the entire residential building due to one single mistake. In the place I watched it, they really tried hard and placed artificial spider webs and spiders, but that's pretty much all that can be remembered positively about it. (14/05/2024)

Vermines is a bit like Arachnophobia in the French way. You get rather unconventional and not very likeable characters, a grimy slum setting and a very limited amount of humour, but you also get solid action, very indiscriminate spider terror and a few scenes that will make you uncomfortable in your seat. The film uses real creatures in many scenes, and when it goes into computer-generated effects, it's not noticeable at all, so the realistic visuals do a lot for the viewer's effect. There probably aren't that many good spider horror movies historically, but this one can easily count among them. (12/10/2023)

A única coisa pior do que encontrar uma aranha no apartamento é perder uma aranha no apartamento. Exatamente esse tipo de evento acontece no filme, levando à infestação de todo o prédio por aranhas venenosas (ou o que quer que fossem) da cave ao sótão, onde as aranhas continuam a multiplicar-se em uma velocidade surpreendente e sempre maiores do que as anteriores, com o qual o filme sugere levemente algo próximo à ficção científica. O ambiente realista de um conjunto habitacional e a abordagem fresca de um jovem cineasta cheio de energia são exatamente o que o género de horror com aranhas precisava. Depois de uma introdução mais longa dos personagens, a ação torna-se intensa e continua a intensificar-se ainda mais, especialmente para pessoas que têm medo de aranhas, algumas cenas serão insuportáveis. Todos ficarão com sentimentos inconfortáveis, com certeza. O melhor filme de terror com aranhas desde Aracnofobia de 1990. (14/10/2023)