Vermin: did you understand the message of the film? We explain the ending to you!

Vermin by Sébastien Vaniček is currently in theaters. Shot with real spiders in order to make the film more realistic, this thriller led by Théo Christine, Finnegan Oldfield, Jérôme Niel, Sofia Lesaffre and Lisa Nyarko takes place in a building in Noisy-Le-Grand. Kaleb, an exotic animal enthusiast, comes home one day with a poisonous spider and accidentally lets it escape. The inhabitants will then have to fight for their survival.

The first French film with spiders, the feature film has a bias that should surprise spectators. Far from demonizing arthropods, Vermin attempts to make people understand that, despite their unattractive appearance, spiders are not the hideous and bloodthirsty creatures that we have been described in films for many years. A very metaphorical film.

During our meeting with the director, the latter confided to us: “There is a profoundly animalist theme in animal protection in this film. It was really important to me that the spiders were treated well before, during and after filming. We were very vigilant about this.

This involved somewhat particular working methods. A spider can spin for 20 seconds in the end. Afterwards, she is tired and needs to be changed. So we had 200-250 of them on set because we really respected them. As soon as they were tired, we put them back in the vivarium, in the warmth, to regain their strength..”

Fear of spiders: a cultural phenomenon?

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

Spiders that are deadly to humans do not exist.

“Spiders that are deadly to humans do not exist. There are certainly some cases of death linked to spider bites but they are not linked to the venom but to infections or even superinfections at the site of the bite or these are fragile people who have not been processed on time.”

The expert adds: “The number of cases each year is between 0 and 15. We are on the same proportions as for shark attacks and films like Jaws have given a very bad image of sharks as is the case with spiderss.”

And precisely, if at first glance we can think that Vermin aims to demonize spiders, it is actually quite the opposite.

Director Sébastien Vaniček explains the genesis of the project in the film’s press kit: “I thought back to these years of struggle, creating courts that we didn’t see because I lacked the contacts, the right addresses… This feeling of not going where we want. What the media call the “suburban syndrome” exists and I experienced it. I broadened my thinking around the crime of facial appearance, a subject which touches me a lot, and which was embodied with the image of the spider.

It exists and wanders around our home, but we don’t want to see it so we squash it immediately. The symbolism of xenophobia, of intolerance, it was there. Everyone being treated like vermin in this metaphorical parallel.”

The spider as a metaphor for the commuter

Questioned on this subject during our meeting, the filmmaker develops his point and explains to us why he wanted to approach this theme using the metaphor of the spider: “The suburban film has almost become a genre in France. I wanted to break away from it because the suburbs that I know, the ones in which I grew up, I had not yet seen on the screen and I wanted to film it. The suburbs are sometimes much more positive than the one I saw on screen. Afterwards, it’s because I probably don’t have the same story as the other directors. Everyone shows this that he lived.

Tandem

But above all I wanted to show the outside view of the suburbs and the way of treating the suburbanite. When I talk about my difficulties, it was a lot of frustration at not being able to do the job I wanted to do, because I wasn’t considered, because nothing predestined me to go in that direction.

As we expand we realize that it’s the same thing for many people. They label us very quickly and put us in boxes, like Kaleb does with the spider at the beginning.

And the spider is obviously the best way to talk about that because yes, when we see it in our living room, we want it out very quickly or worse, we want to kill it. So the film really handles this subject in an entertaining way. I think it’s great to be able to have a cinema experience, to be afraid, to have tears in your eyes, to live full of emotions and to say that what’s more, the film makes you think. It’s a subtext, I wanted the point to be well disseminated. If we get it, it’s cool, if not, we still have a good time.”

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

What does the end of Vermin mean?

Now that you have the subtext of the film, it’s easier to explain Vermin’s ending. During the final sequence, Kaleb must get out of the car in order to open the parking lot door, the last obstacle to freedom. The latter then faces a huge spider. But instead of trying to kill her, Kaleb asks his sister to turn off the car’s lights, allowing the spider to escape.

Tandem

Sébastien Vaniček comments at the end of his film on our microphone: “I wanted to film the ending like a western. It’s a film that deals a lot with violence, whether verbal violence or, on the contrary, violence due to the absence of words.

There is a lot left unsaid in the film. Whether it’s the two friends who can no longer speak to each other, a brother and a sister who can no longer communicate, a group of young people facing the police… It’s at the center of the film and I think I wanted to film this face-to-face scene like a western because in my opinion these are the most violent scenes in cinema.

If people communicated just a little more, maybe there would be less violence.

We expect to see someone shoot, we don’t know who will shoot first, there will be a dead person. And in fact, that’s not at all what’s happening because we’re at the stage of the film where Kaleb has understood, he’s evolved and reached the end. The spider is only waiting for one thing, which is to see the movement in front of it to know if it is a predator or not. She doesn’t see him as prey. Kaleb takes a step towards the spider to let it go and not kill it or run it over with the car.

We thus realize that when we are a little more attentive to what we have in front of us, we are less inclined to be violent. So, that’s the message. I tell myself that if people communicated a little more, maybe there would be less violence.”

Vermines is currently available at the cinema.