By Marc Patterson
If you’re a hardcore horror junkie like me then you might often find yourself judging a film by its first five minutes. With Bite, don’t do that. The first seven minutes play out like a hundred other direct-to-video, low-budget, found footage schlock-fests that have been forced-fed to me over the years. I almost started to regret my decision and commitment to review the latest indie production by director and producer Chad Archibald. Thing is, having watched the trailer, I knew there was something more beyond the lackluster intro. Truth told, the intro makes much more sense later on, as things are explained in full.
The film opens with bride to be Casey (Elma Begovic), and her two friends Kristen (Denise Yuen) and Jill (Annette Wozniak), having a gratuitously good time in Costa Rica. After a hard night of partying, and a little extra-curricular action, the girls decide to seek out a hidden hot-spring and enjoy a relaxing girls only day. There’s something a bit off about the hot spring, but it doesn’t dissuade the girls from having a good time, even after Casey gets bit by an unseen assailant beneath the water.
Back at home, Casey starts to feel the effect of the bite. Her dreams are tormenting her and she starts acting in an erratic manner. At first it seems that stress has got her down, what with her fiance’s mother being a practical facsimile to Norman Bates crazy mother, but things soon spiral into a whole new level of psychologically tortured crazy.
Bite is a film that promises viewers a specific type of creature feature, and to this end it’s quite an impressive film. It feels inspired in part by Cronenberg’s The Fly, and it does a decent job of paying homage without feeling like it’s ripping off the master of horror. Fans of Lovecraft will appreciate the Shadow over Innsmouth vibe of the more claustrophobic and creepy moments the film creates.
The gore is straight up old school, loaded with lots of nasty oozing puss, slime being spewed from all sort of orifices, and other biologically nasty things. It’s all the worst parts of an STD gone wild, and for this hardened horror fans will rejoice.
It would be tragic to not mention the real treat of this film and that was the strong performance by lead actress Elma Begovic. She transforms herself from a bikini clad, party-hearty bachelorette into a hungry, human devouring, queen of all six-legged creatures, and makes it look natural, perhaps too natural. At times her eyes would cut straight into the camera with a creepiness enough to make a viewer squirm, at least just a little. The smart script provides a believable motivation for her transformation and eventual revenge, further reinforcing Archibald as a proven force in horror.
As with any smaller scale production, Bite has its flaws, but those flaws are easily forgiven with the solid acting and splatter-heavy effects. Ultimately, Bite has restored my faith in the future of indie horror, and this critic can’t wait to see what’s next for Archibald.
Bite opens in select U.S. theaters, VOD and On Demand May 6th, 2016.