Vermin: Did you get the message of the movie? We’ll explain the ending!

Sebastien Vanicek’s Vermin is currently in theaters. Filmed with real spiders to make the film more realistic, this thriller, directed by Theo Cristin, Finnegan Oldfield, Jerome Niel, Sophia Lezaffre and Lisa Niarko, takes place in the building of Noisy-Le-Grand. Caleb, a lover of exotic animals, comes home one day with a poisonous spider and accidentally lets it escape. After that, the population will have to fight for survival.

The first French film with spiders, the feature film has a bias that should surprise the audience. Far from demonizing arthropods, pest It tries to make people realize that despite their unattractive appearance, spiders are not the scary and bloodthirsty creatures that we have been depicted in movies for many years. It is a very metaphorical film.

During the meeting with the director, the latter told us: “There is a deep animalistic theme of animal protection in this film. It was very important to me that the spiders were treated well before, during and after filming. We have been very vigilant about this.

This included certain working methods. The spider can finally spin for 20 seconds. After that, it is tired and replaceable. So we had 200-250 on set because we really respected them. As soon as they are tired, we return them to the vivarium, in the heat, to restore their strength..”

Fear of spiders: a cultural phenomenon?

Christine Rollard, an arachnologist and teacher-researcher at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, tells us that spiders are, in most cases, harmless to humans.

There are no spiders that are deadly to humans.

“There are no spiders that are deadly to humans. Of course, there are cases of death associated with spider bites, but they are not related to the poison, but to infections or even superinfections at the site of the bite, or these are fragile people who were not treated in time.”

The expert adds:The number of cases is between 0 and 15 per year. We are in the same proportions as in shark attacks and movies Jaws Give sharks a very bad picture, as is the case with spidersS.”

And exactly, if we can think at first glance pest It’s meant to demonize spiders, but it’s actually the opposite.

Director Sebastian Vanicek Explains the genesis of the project in a press release for the film: “I thought about the struggle of these years, create courts that we could not see because I lacked contacts, correct addresses… This feeling that we will not go where we want. What the media calls “suburban syndrome” exists, and I’ve experienced it, broadening my thinking about appearance crime, a subject I’m very passionate about, and which was epitomized by the image of the spider.

It exists and roams our house, but we don’t want to see it, so we immediately destroy it. There was the symbolism of xenophobia and intolerance. In this metaphorical parallel, everyone is treated as a pest.”

The spider as a metaphor for the passenger

Interviewed on this topic during our meeting, the filmmaker discusses his thoughts and explains why he wanted to approach this topic using the metaphor of a spider: “Suburban film has almost become a genre in France. I wanted to get away from it because the suburbs that I know, that I grew up in, I hadn’t seen on screen yet, and I wanted to capture it. Suburbs are sometimes much more positive than what I’ve seen on screen, then because I probably don’t have the same background as other directors. All this shows that he lived.

But above all I wanted to show the outside view of suburbia and the way suburbia is treated. When I talk about my difficulties, it was a great disappointment that I could not do the work that I wanted, because I was not thought of, because there was nothing that allowed me to go in that predetermined direction.

As we expand, we realize that it is the same for many. We are very quickly labeled and put into boxes, like Caleb does to Spider-Man in the beginning.

And the spider is obviously the best way to talk about it, because yes, when we see it in our living room, we want it very quickly or worse, we want to kill it. So the movie really entertains this issue. I think it’s great to be able to live the experience of a movie, to be scared, to have tears in your eyes, to be full of emotions and to say that a movie also makes you think. This is a subtext, I wanted the idea to be well spread. If we get it, that’s cool, if we don’t, we still have a good time.”

Warning, the rest of this article contains spoilers for Vermin’s ending.

What does Vermin’s end mean?

Now that you have the subtext of the movie, it’s easier to explain Vermin’s ending. During the final sequence, Caleb has to get out of the car to open the parking lot door, the last obstacle to freedom. The latter then encounters a huge spider. But instead of trying to kill him, Caleb asks his sister to turn on the car lights, allowing Spider-Man to escape.

Sebastian Vanicek Comments at the end of his film on our microphone: “I wanted to shoot the ending like a western. It’s a film that deals a lot with violence, whether it’s verbal violence or, conversely, violence through the absence of words.

A lot is left unsaid in the film. Whether it’s two friends who can’t talk to each other anymore, a brother and sister who can’t communicate anymore, a group of young people in front of the police… that’s at the heart of the film and I think I wanted to capture it. This face-to-face scene looks like a western because in my opinion it is the most violent scene in cinema.

If people had communicated a little more, maybe there would have been less violence.

Waiting for someone to shoot, we don’t know who shot first, will be dead. Actually, that’s not what happens at all, because we’re at the point in the movie where Caleb has found out, he’s evolved, and he’s reached the end. A spider waits for only one thing, that is to see movement in front of it to know if it is prey or not. He doesn’t see her as a predator. Caleb takes a step towards the spider to let him go without getting killed and run over by a car.

Thus, we realize that when we are a little more attentive to what is in front of us, we are less prone to violence. So that’s the message. I tell myself that if there was a little more communication, maybe there would be less violence.”

Vermines is currently available in theaters.