Vermin (5 Stars)

This is the 32nd film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

I needed to think a long time before rating "Vermin". It's definitely the best film of this year's festival, but does it really deserve five stars? It's not a perfect film. Maybe I just feel the need to give at least one film a five star rating.

Spiders have been bred in an Arab desert. The exact country isn't obvious. One of them finds its way into a small shop in France. It's sold for 100 Euros to Kaleb, a young man who likes to collect exotic animals. He puts it in a shoe box, but it eats its way out, and it soon multiplies. Each generation is bigger than the last. Giant spiders terrorise the building where Kaleb lives.

My main problem with the film is the pacing. When it's a battle with the spiders the film is brilliant, but it keeps slowing down to deal with subplots that I find irrelevant. So Kaleb hasn't spoken to his brother for years? So what? Let's not waste time while he explains it, let's get back to fighting the spiders.

Maybe "Vermin" will be better when it goes on general release. We were told that it wasn't complete in time for the festival, so a provisional version was sent. They still have time to put things right.

This is the final film of the festival. I was disappointed this year. Usually there's a mixture of brilliant, average and awful films. This year there have been some good films, but nothing that I considered brilliant. There's only one film that I've given five stars, "Vermin", and I'm not sure if that's a mistake. Putting it another way, there isn't a single film in this year's festival that I want to buy on disc. Let's hope next year's festival is better.