Bite, 2022.
Directed by James Owen.
Starring Shian Denovan, Nansi Nsue, Stuart Sessions, Annabelle Lanyon, Jack Loy, Joe Egan.
SYNOPSIS:
A pair of thieves on the run from gangsters take refuge in a house where some very strange people live.
Bite is the debut feature of surgeon-turned-filmmaker James Owen, and is the probable answer if somebody were to ask, “I wonder what a British version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre would be like?”, although Pete Walker may have already provided an answer back in 1974 with Frightmare.
In Bite, Nina (Shian Denovan) and Yaz (Nansi Nsue) are a pair of low-level thieves who have interrupted an illegal dog fight with their activist friends and made off with the cash that belonged to gangster Roman (Jack Loy). With Roman and his gang in hot pursuit to get their £60 (yes, as much as that) cash back and teach the two petty thieves a lesson, Nina and Yaz take refuge in a house where Nina was taken to when hitchhiking, despite the fact that occupants Beryl (Annabelle Lanyon) and her husband Gerald (Stuart Sessions) were more than a little weird on her previous visit, and when Nina knocks on the door, Beryl answers wearing a bloody apron. Whatever could be going on?
Pretty obvious really, as Nina and Yaz also get to meet Gerald and Beryl’s two adult children and the selection of meat hooks and sharp blades that Gerald has in his underground abattoir. Whilst the UK could do with an up-to-date equivalent to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or any of those brutal backwoods slashers that the US and Australia do so well – and just look at their landscape to see the biggest reason why – the fact is that setting such a story in a suburban house in an English street just does not carry the same sort of menace as an unforgiving territory such as rural Texas or the Outback.
Yes, it would be very shocking to discover that the seemingly normal house with the eccentric elderly couple on your street is home to a human butchery production line, but simply lifting the story straight from Texas and applying it here without any sense of place or nuance just doesn’t work, resulting in what is essentially an Alan Bennett TV play with meat cleavers.
The first half of the movie plays like a Guy Ritchie crime drama as our two main leads attempt to sabotage a dog fight and make off with the cash, and although it is a little confusing as to who is supposed to be on which side it does set things up for what you think is going to be a brutal and violent clash of ideals, but once Nina and Yaz – who are also a couple, for added sympathy when things go down – get to Gerald’s house the tone changes dramatically.
Whether it is the writing, the performance or the direction – probably all three – Stuart Sessions seems to be trying to imitate Anthony Hopkins, playing Gerald as well-spoken and highly educated but prone to bouts of rage (he really does not like swearing) and carrying out his hobby with a degree of rationale that seems to make sense only to him, but this being a low-budget British production he just comes off as a camp villain from Tales of the Unexpected or The Hammer House of Horror; fine if this were a play and he could play it large to a live audience, but in a supposedly gritty horror movie it just feels naff and out of place.
However, the gore is pretty good, which you would hope with James Owen’s experience, and the production design is very authentic, with the English house setting totally believable in its layout and look. Shian Denovan gives a great performance as Nina, and would be an excellent final girl in a slasher movie that had a bit more terror and sense of danger to it, and Annabelle Lanyon – whom you may remember as the fairy Oona in Ridley Scott’s Legend – gives a suitably mousey portrayal of a downtrodden wife with an unpredictable husband, but the rest of the cast all seem to be pitching their performances for different movies, and with the various tones contrasting with each other you never really get a proper sense of dread, just more pantomime villainy.
Bite had a bit of promise to begin with but with not enough originality and the wildly conflicting tones it all just feels a bit underwhelming and toothless, never really hitting its stride or successfully mirroring the movies that inspired it. If you are searching for an unnerving and (relatively) modern UK movie that replicates the brutal hopelessness of some of the more gruesome US titles in a more satisfying way then Steven Sheil’s Mum & Dad from 2008 is still the… ahem… daddy.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Chris Ward
