Tag Archives: Finnegan Oldfield

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Arachnophobia

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Infested

by Hope Madden

Remember Quarantine (or Rec, for that matter)? Remember that moment when you realize you’re locked inside an apartment building, trapped with the ravenous undead?

OK, so that but spiders.

Nice, right?!

Sébastien Vanicek’s Infested (co-written with Florent Bernard) doesn’t steal from other movies as much as it mines the primal fears that have plagued the most effective horror movies from the beginning.

Kaleb (Théo Christine) is a well-meaning dumbass. He lives in a dump of a high rise, but he loves the place, loves the neighbors, and cherishes the memory of his mother. That’s why, unlike his sister Manon (Lisa Nyarko), Kaleb doesn’t want to leave. In fact, he’s made a cozy home in his room for any number of exotic little beasties—the latest of which he just picked up from the super-secret back room of a dodgy shop.

“Careful, it’s probably poisonous,” the shopkeeper calls as Kaleb carries his rubber-banded plastic container and the very poisonous, extremely nasty spider inside.

Jumping ahead, Kaleb does not heed the warning.

Apartment horror can be so creepy when it’s done well: dark hallways, grimy elevators, creepy parking garages, too many floors until safety, and loads of places for spiders to nest. Vanicek makes excellent use of these spaces, and he shows solid instincts for creature FX—when to go practical, when to show little, when to show lots (and lots and lots). But his film succeeds on the lived-in world of these neighbors and friends.

Christine (Gran Turismo) delivers messy, loving authenticity as the guy who cares deeply and screws up everything. Finnegan Oldfield (Final Cut) is even better, and he brings with him a realism and natural charisma that cements the rag tag band of survivors as human beings to root for.

That realism doesn’t extend fully to the arachnid horror. Their reproductive mechanisms, their feeding habits, growth spurts—well, they’re not supposed to be from deep space or a nuclear accident, so the extremes seen in the building definitely strain credibility.

But damn! That doesn’t make it any less creepy! You may find yourself shaking out your sleeves and pulling the drawstring tight around your hoodie. I did. But at least the cockroaches are under control.

New In Theaters

Portrait of the Artist as a Dead Man

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Final Cut

by Hope Madden

Back in 2017, Shin’ichirô Ueda made a truly clever zombie comedy with no zombies or horror in it. It was a film within a film that delightfully hacked away at the undignified and thrilling process of moviemaking.

Between 2017 and 2023, two things have happened worth noting. 1) French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius has remade Ueda’s movie. 2) I made an independent film. The first point will be the focus, but the second is worth bringing up because Hazanavicius’s Final Cut is an entirely different experience for me now. It made my stomach hurt. Not in a bad way – I mean, that’s never pleasant, but Hazanavicius mines Ueda’s material to create the same compelling, queasying anxiety that likely all filmmakers know.

How charmingly insane is it that the writer/director behind the 2011 surprise Oscar winner The Artist has remade Ueda’s shoestring zombie insanity One Cut of the Dead? He seems such an odd match, with his very fluid, very French comic sensibilities. And his Oscar. But maybe this story compelled him because it’s every filmmaker’s living nightmare.

The screenplay, which he adapted, is almost exactly the same except for a handful of jokes that explain how very Japanese the content is. (The zombies, for instance, are the undead result of Japanese military experiments. “Japanese? Here?” asks one actress. “Improbable, but not impossible,” answers her co-star.)

Like Ueda’s original, Final Cut is split basically into two movies. In the first, the cast and crew of a low-budget zombie flick find their set under attack from real zombies. The zealot auteur (Romain Duris) films on, gleeful at the authenticity his movie has finally achieved.

It’s a clever way to deconstruct filmmaking, but it’s only the beginning. And even though Final Cut is a remake, the likelihood that you missed the original requires that I forego additional plot details. I’d hate to spoil the silly ingenuity to come.

Duris is wonderful in a lead performance that requires a lot. Finnegan Oldfield brings wonderful layers to his pretentious young actor character and the whole ensemble seems to have a blast.

Final Cut is missing the manic, raw authenticity of Ueda’s original, though. It feels too well constructed, its jokes too perfectly timed and placed. And yet it is otherwise so similar to One Cut of the Dead that it’s tough not to wonder over the point of remaking it.

If you have not seen One Cut of the Dead, this is a fun film but you should do yourself the favor of finding the original. If you have seen it, Final Cut a good time. If you’re a filmmaker, bring the Pepto.