“I wanted to make entertainment that would make you shiver as well as laugh”

For his first feature film, in theaters since December 27, the 34-year-old filmmaker imagines an invasion of deadly spiders in a building in the Paris region, with a deliberate analogy between these insects that we want to get rid of and the inhabitants of the neighborhoods. popular.

A few weeks after the cinema releases of the very successful The animal world And Vincent must diehere is a new French “genre” film (even if the term has become a bit of a catch-all) which should have some success in our cinemas. Vermin tells the story of Kaleb, 30 years old, passionate about insects and other exotic animals that he keeps in his room, and who one day brings back a particularly virulent spider, which will end up escaping and triggering an invasion of small creatures in its tower in the Paris region.

An entertainment that is both very cool and very mastered, and a B series that takes responsibility, with quality special effects to boot. Meeting with the director, Sébastien Vaniček.

franceinfo: The starting point of the project is to evoke this fear of spiders, which is something both timeless and which speaks to everyone?

Sébastien Vaniček: It was a small challenge to succeed in financing a film where we tackle a phobia which means that potentially eight percent of French people could say ‘ah no, I can’t go see this film’. But I wanted to make entertainment, a fun film, which would make you shiver but also laugh, and could take us to several different places. Make an event film, because I used to travel for that, events when I was younger I went to the cinema. So on my small scale I wanted to make one, this kind of film which provokes you by telling you that you can NOT see it, there is a “roller coaster” effect where you motivate yourself to go with it. friends or your other half.

Are you making an analogy between these insects that we don’t want to see, that we want to crush, and the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods?

Exactly, and I would even extend the symbolism to xenophobia in general. And my co-writer Florent Bernard comes from Burgundy, he has nothing to do with the suburbs, but he also suffered from having to establish himself in a trendy world of Parisian cinema, which is not ours. Personally, I started talking about suburbanites because that’s what I know, and then I wanted to spit it out on paper, and it became this film which is a very universal project, with a hidden purpose. behind entertainment. And the title of the film by the way, Vermincan be read in both senses.

The almost unique decor of the HLM bar is holy bread for a director, because it is a somewhat theatrical unity of place which allows a lot of visual ideas to be developed?

Yes, without forgetting the budgetary constraints, and the closed session which allows us to produce a 1h40 film without exceeding the planned financing.

“It was extremely stimulating to know how we were going to present and film these settings, making them more and more threatening and hostile, as the spiders gain ground.”

Sébastien Vaniček, director of “Vermin”

at franceinfo

It brings a lot of tension, it’s stimulating, and so yes, holy bread as you say, completely.

You mix real spiders with special effects, the obsession for a director in these cases is on the one hand that it is realistic but also that it “holds up” well over time?

The real spiders set the bar very high, if I dare say so, because we were able to do great things with them, in terms of framing or movements, and when we went to 3D we therefore decided to base ourselves on the real movements and appearance of others. For example, I enjoyed filming them in silhouettes, knowing that it’s mainly a question of light, so it can age well, even if sometimes when they are in close-up in the beam of a flashlight we don’t have other choices than to show more precise details, and these specific points risk being dated in the long term.

Are you filming in a very surprising location in the Paris region, the Arènes de Picasso in Noisy-le-Grand, very close to the Espaces d’Abraxas, which are also baroque?

And which we have already seen in Hunger Games And Brazil. So I was particularly lucky, because I myself grew up in Noisy, these buildings are those of my childhood. I still have lots of friends who live there, and I know them well. And when we went to scout for the film, I said to myself ‘but why don’t we start directly with me’ and what’s more, not to spoil anything, there is this aesthetic itself which is a little spidery, of science -fiction, which fits very well with the atmosphere of the film.

Vermin by Sébastien Vaniček, in theaters on December 27.