BITE (2015)

Studio:       Shout Factory
Director:    Chad Archibald
Writer:       Jayme LaForest, Chad Archibald
Producer:  Cody Calahan, Chad Archibald, Christopher Giroux
Stars:     Elma Begovic, Annette Wozniak, Denise Yuen, Jordan Gray, Lawrene Denkers, Barry Birnberg, Daniel Klimitz, Tianna Nori, Caroline Palmer

Review Score:

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Summary:

A woman bit by an unknown insect while in Costa Rica for her bachelorette party undergoes a strange transformation.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

For her bachelorette party, Casey Morgan goes to Costa Rica with her friends Kirsten and Jill. Something unknown swimming underwater bites Casey while she and Jill swim near a waterfall.

Already uncertain about her upcoming marriage to fiancé Jared, Casey returns home with additional guilt after spending a drunken evening with a man met in Costa Rica and waking up on the beach without her ring. However, Casey is continually unable to tell Jared that she wants to postpone their wedding. Casey and Jared live in separate apartments in the same building to appease Jared’s disapproving mother Mrs. Kennedy, who is also their landlord.

Red marks start spreading all over Casey’s body and gradually worsen. Casey also begins occasionally vomiting a viscous substance. A festering pustule explodes on Casey’s thigh while having sex with Jared. Cyrano, a dog belonging to neighbor Mr. Matheson, refuses to go for his regular walk with Casey.

Having seen a dermatologist for her own bug bites, Jill lends Casey a cream for her sores. Casey discovers she is pregnant, presumably from the man in Costa Rica. Casey also calls a clinic about her condition and acts on phone advice to purchase over-the-counter medication.

Casey’s mutation continues as she starts laying hundreds of insect eggs. Her apartment transforms into an organic hive.

Mrs. Kennedy comes over to investigate complaints of a smell coming from Casey’s apartment. As Mrs. Kennedy berates Casey for not being good enough to marry her son, Casey coughs up an acidic substance that burns Mrs. Kennedy’s face and kills her.

Casey and her apartment continue transforming as she also continues avoiding Jared. Casey eats her fingernail as well as a live cockroach.

Kirsten talks to Jill about why they haven’t seen Casey lately. It is revealed that Jill, who is secretly obsessed with Jared, stole Casey’s ring while they were in Costa Rica.

Kirsten comes to Casey’s apartment and is horrified by the scene. Kirsten implores Casey to leave with her, but Casey insists that she cannot abandon her eggs. Kirsten tries hiding in the bathroom to call 911, but drops her phone in the water when she sees Mrs. Kennedy’s corpse in the bathtub. Casey puts her hand over Kirsten’s mouth to quiet her and a blue substance secretes from Casey’s palm into Kirsten’s face unconsciously. Kirsten dies.

Jared starts peeing blood. Jill shows Jared video footage of Casey with the other man in Costa Rica and tells him that they had sex. Jill seduces Jared and they start having sex in her car while parked outside Jared and Casey’s apartment building.

With her heightened senses, Casey hears Jared and Jill having sex and screams. Jared and Jill suddenly spit up a strange substance. Jared exits the car and Jill drives away.

Jill comes to Casey’s apartment and sees Kirsten’s body hanging from a wall, which is now covered in an organic substance. Casey captures Jill using her newly-developed poison stinger tail. Jill pleads for mercy before Casey shows her video footage proving that Jill purposefully allowed the man in Costa Rica to take advantage of Casey while she was drunk. Casey kisses Jill to put pus in her mouth and forces her former friend to scream for Jared.

Jared races to Casey’s apartment. Casey slits Jill’s throat in front of Jared before attacking him. Jared wrestles Casey to the ground, but she stings him with her tail. Jared grabs a wooden furniture leg and thrusts it into Casey. He then repeatedly stomps Casey’s head with his foot and kills her.

Jared stumbles back to his apartment while spitting up pus. He collapses before he can dial 911.

One Week Later – Police and a hazmat team process the scene. Jared’s apartment has transformed into an insect lair similar to Casey’s. Numerous eggs surrounding Jared’s body suddenly hatch and strange bugs fly everywhere.

Hannah jogs with her friend Joanne. When Joanne is bit by something, Hannah calms her by saying it is only a bug bite.

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Review:

Follow indie horror news or the genre film festival scene and chances are you heard something about “Bite” during its Fantasia 2015 debut.  An ambulance photo accompanying social media scuttlebutt painted a picture of a movie so viscerally charged that at least one patron was compelled to vomit while another bonked his noggin following a fainting spell at the premiere.

Savvy suspicions smelled a marketing stunt holding hands with “Bite”-branded barf bags given out as promotional items.  Short of a PR person copping to a pinch of William Castle-inspired showmanship, or an urgent care patient producing a bill for that ambulance visit, odds are we will never know if the commotion was staged or genuine.  What we do know is that whether purposefully or inadvertently, the extracurricular event had horror fandom buzzing about “Bite” being a disgustingly disturbing experience.

Like that first ride at Six Flags accustoming your stomach to a day of dropping, “Bite” eases into its queasiness factor with a shaky “found footage” intro.  Roll your eyes back down.  “Bite” has a clever use for the first-person format by only employing it as infrequent flashback footage.  This is a far more creative way to put an audience in the wayback machine than fogging the frame or adding a sepia tint to the color.

Casey is already entertaining second thoughts about her upcoming wedding to fiancé Jared.  After a drunken getaway with her girlfriends results in body shots with another man and a missing engagement ring come morning, Casey knows she and Jared really need to talk.  Yet as those nuptial doubts continue snowballing into increasing anxiety, there is also the mysterious bug bite on her body giving Casey more cause for concern.

Casey brought something other than guilt home with her from Costa Rica.  She brought back a festering pustule that will not stop spreading.  It isn’t just her flesh that is mutating, either.  Casey’s mind is undergoing an even scarier transformation that sees the formerly bubbly bachelorette metamorphosing into something more insect than human.

If you have a friend setting sail for a tropical trip, show him/her “Bite” beforehand and you can wring your hands with perverse delight knowing s/he won’t be sleeping anytime soon.  Director Chad Archibald cites his film’s inspiration as stemming from a sister-in-law’s Guatemalan bed net becoming a nightly haven for spiders and insects of all shapes and sizes, resulting in various bug bites that were just as frightening.

Ever wonder what unknown species just brushed past your leg while swimming in unfamiliar waters?  “Bite” takes the fear of where that weird bump on your arm came from and amplifies it to an extreme certain to have you brushing a bit harder next time you feel a phantom tug on your skin.

Steeled stomachs craving a challenge may be disheartened to hear that “Bite” is not as physically revolting as the Fantasia furor might lead one to believe.  Conversely, that news should come as a welcome relief for those of us who are unimpressed by grossness for grossness’ sake as something’s primary claim to fame.  In truth, “Bite” is about as artfully conceived as gross-out gore can be, and there is more motivating its body mutation storyline than simply wishing to trigger a gag reflex.

For instance, Casey vomits repeatedly throughout the film, but the substance she upchucks is a clear-colored lubricant, not a chunky mess.  Cheap body-horror movies, “Condemned” (review here) being one springing to mind, focus solely on flinging filth and have nothing to offer beyond bathing everything in bodily fluids. “Bite” keeps skin crawling with a psychological factor paralleling pressures of marriage and parenthood.  Its metaphors may be slight, but its intent is above providing pure shock value and nothing else.

Light humor also pops up for additional relief from the egg-laying insanity going on in Casey’s apartment turned hive.  Her friend Jill, upon seeing Casey going Jeff Goldblum while webbing putrefies on the walls, nervously quips, “people always get sick after vacations.  I’m sure they’ve seen this before.”

Between her initial turn of transformation and Casey’s full Monty, momentum could use more pep.  Something positive about director Chad Archibald’s style, as additionally evidenced by his previous efforts “Antisocial” (review here) and “The Drownsman” (review here), is that he has an innate sense of how to use camera and cutting for maximum cinematic effect.  Archibald at least knows how to shoot the Hell out of a bathtub by now.  Visually, his movies have the same mainstream multiplex-ready polish of a Blumhouse or Screen Gems release.

Referencing the same trio of films however, something still in need of work is amplifying the acting.  Roles such as Casey’s flighty friend, her milquetoast man, and sneering mother-in-law are already flat by nature of being stereotypical.  Pull more passion from those performances and the characterizations would benefit from a personality infusion.  In one way, it works for the narrative that someone such as Jared is such an uncharismatic dud.  On the other hand, it’s a drag to see the sluggishness in his early scenes.

Growing pains common across Archibald’s current filmography, like scripts centered on people who never seek professional help at the first sign of a serious problem, have room for improvement.  “Bite” in particular overburdens itself by inventing new distractions to prevent Casey from making a simple ER visit.  But even if you haven’t enjoyed his previous films or are still formulating your opinion, Chad Archibald is making horror movies worth paying attention to, with “Bite” perhaps being at the top of that list.

As much as obvious influences are openly acknowledged, with Cronenberg and “Insidious” being chief among those in play for “Bite,” the reverence for them reads here as tribute instead of exploitation.  With its terrific tone of sickly horror permeating throughout and excellent FX, prop, and set work on top, “Bite” emerges as a no-nonsense, traditional body-horror movie with a sleek style of modernity.

Fun Fact: Actress Caroline Palmer cameos as a woman credited as Hannah, the same name as her character in “The Drownsman.”  If this is a shared universe situation, then “Bite” clearly takes place first.  (Though it would have been cleverer if her dialogue referenced that honeymoon she seemingly never had in the other film.)

Review Score:  75

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