The skin-crawling horror movie Stephen King loved: “Scary, gross, well-made”
When he’s not busy writing scary stories of his own, Stephen King can regularly be found reading or watching terrifying tales crafted by other authors and filmmakers.
It makes sense for one of the most iconic figures in modern horror to enjoy the genre, even if King’s taste expands well beyond the spine-chilling narratives that made him famous. That said, he’s revealed himself as a viewer a lot more inclined to check out the medium he’s called home for the last half a century.
Some of King’s personal favourite flicks include André Øvredal’s The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, Neil Marshall’s The Descent, and Robert Eggers’ The Witch, all of which fall firmly into his wheelhouse. He doesn’t keep the blinders on when it comes to cinema, though, with non-horror titles like William Friedkin’s Sorcerer and Steven Spielberg’s Duel also striking a chord.
Horror has splintered into countless subgenres, and there are at least a couple that even the most devoted genre aficionados will never convince themselves to watch. A lot of it has to do with personal fears and phobias because it’s hard to imagine anyone with even a passing distaste for spiders even contemplating sitting down to brave Eight Legged Freaks, Arachnophobia, or even the haunting spider-like creatures King concocted for The Mist that were brought to the screen by Frank Darabont.
King clearly has no issues with insect-adjacent features, selecting a skin-crawling French picture as one he felt compelled to recommend to his millions of social media followers. Equally descriptive in two languages, writer and director Sébastien Vaniček’s Vermines was rebranded as Infested for its United States release in April 2024, and it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Théo Christine’s Kaleb ends up in the possession of a venomous spider, but after the smuggled beastie escapes from his clutches and begins building an army of rapidly reproducing arachnids that threaten to overwhelm his apartment complex and eradicate the human population, a fight for survival pits the dwindling band of residents against an innumerable amount of octo-legged foes.
Hitting the nail squarely on the head, King offered his entirely accurate insights on Infested. “Spiders, some as big as puppies, overrun a French apartment building,” he wrote. “Scary, gross, well-made.” There’s not an untrue word spoken, even if arachnophobes would do well to steer as far clear of the film as possible.
It’s more than just a simple creature feature, too, with Vaniček using the isolated setting and dynamics between the various groups as a way to spotlight social discrepancies and xenophobia, albeit with plenty of hair-raising moments. Not many low-budget horror movies tend to hold their world premieres at the Venice Film Festival, another sign that Infested has a lot more to say than just scaring the shit out of people, which it also manages with aplomb.
