Bite, 2015.
Directed by Chad Archibald.
Starring Elma Begovic, Annette Wozniak, Denise Yuen , Barry Birnberg, Justin Moses and Jordan Gray.
SYNOPSIS:
A bride-to-be on her hen party gets bitten by an insect and begins to experience some rather gruesome changes.
Casey (Elma Begovic) is a young woman about to marry her fiancé Jared (Jordan Gray) but before the wedding she goes on a hen/bachelorette trip away with two of her friends. After some drunken tomfoolery with some partying lads they are given directions to a picturesque lagoon away from the tourist spots so they trek off into the jungle to find it, only for Casey to get bitten by something she cannot see swimming in the water. But it’s okay because ‘it’s only a bite’.
Upon the girls’ return Casey discovers she is pregnant, although she hasn’t yet slept with Jared due to his interfering mother and her insistence that Jared wait until he is married. As if that wasn’t enough to worry about she also finds that the bite seems to have gotten infected and within days the infection spreads, causing Casey to shed her skin, lose her hair and vomit up acidic slime, along with dropping hundreds of larvae all over her apartment. If only she’d gotten it seen to when she got back…
The obvious comparison for Bite is to Cronenberg’s The Fly, not only for the gloopy effects and twisted body horror imagery but also because there is a subtext at work. In The Fly you essentially have a love story set against a backdrop of metaphor for disease and the corruption of the flesh, with characters that you invest in because they are well written, well acted and go through the kinds of emotions that anybody faced with the onset of disease would go through; in Bite – and it’s not for want of trying – there is none of that. There are underlying themes about fear of commitment, guilt over cheating on a lover and generally being scared of what may lay ahead for you in this uncertain life but none of it ever grabs you by the throat and drags you into its madness in a satisfying way, thanks mainly to some stiff acting and weird character decisions that don’t make whole lot of sense. Wouldn’t you get an insect bite treated the moment it started oozing yellow pus? Of course you would, or would you let it fester to the point of exploding when you’re having sex with your mummy’s boy fiancé? If you walked into a friend’s apartment and they had turned it into a hive, complete with hanging webs and slimy insect eggs, wouldn’t you turn around and run? Not here, as Casey’s friends barely seem to acknowledge her taste in home décor has changed, and it is these details that lets Bite down because as you’re watching it becomes obvious that there are more than a few dumb plot conveniences that in better hands (i.e. David Cronenberg, as this film is clearly a nod to) would not be an issue.
Bite comes with a lot of buzz (sorry…) around it thanks to its use of slimy effects and thankfully it does do well on that front. Casey’s transformation into a human/insect hybrid is pretty good considering the obvious budget restrictions and her final look is quite unsettling, although in a certain light she does look more like an out-patient from a burns unit than she does Brundlefly. If you can ignore the flat line delivery of bland dialogue, unlikeable characters doing stupid things and take Bite at face value then it is an enjoyable gore-fest that is clearly punching above its weight. The stories of people fainting and sick bags being handed out at screenings may be a trifle over the top as there is nothing here that outdoes any of the gruesome (and still amazing) effects in The Fly or something a little less grounded like the Evil Dead remake, although there is more of it so it does feel a bit more relentless in that regard. It’s just a shame that the talky bits in between the well-handled action pieces don’t hold as much weight or are as entertaining but nevertheless, if you’re looking for a bloody no-brainer to stick on late at night for a few gross-out moments then Bite does do the job, and sometimes just being visually disgusting is all it takes.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
Originally published October 10, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
