Infested

But the best thing I can say about Infested is that I squirmed in my seat as if I were sitting on a chair made out of upturned nails for the majority of the running time.

The kind of film where a viewer feels compelled to shake out their pant leg afterwards to make sure there aren’t any critters hiding in there, which, on an elemental level, makes Infested a success.

Vanicek’s first feature is an impressive debut, driven by an energetic fright.

An instant minor genre classic, it is fun and then some — a conceptually unremarkable but resourceful, energetic, stylish and good-humored creature feature with above-average human character interest.

There are no fresh ideas in the French creepy-crawler “Infested,” yet this first feature from Sébastien Vanicek scurries forward with such pep and purpose that its shortcomings are easily forgivable.

If Infested had given us a little more reason to invest in its human specimens than in the blunt mechanics of its genre trappings, then maybe some of the commentary would have clung to us like the webs do to the spiders’ victims.

The theme of residents versus cops may remind some viewers of the “Rec” Spanish film franchise, but instead of using the residents as obstacles and threats to sympathetic outsiders investigating the phenomenon, the residents are centered

Creepy, icky, and pretty effective.

The characters feel real and organic in Infested, and the performances are noteworthy.

Features some of the most skin-crawling, anxiety-inducing scenes in any recent horror movie, executed with impressive skill for a feature debut.