“Bite” is such a quick fly-by of a film. Speed and brevity are the natural bedfellows of excellent horror and this film has it in spades. Living in the commonplace fears of animal interactions on vacation, we follow a young woman as she tries to recover from a Central American bug bite. While insect body horror fear movies remain perfected by Cronenberg, there’s something going on here. The found footage nature of the film works at points as a modern touchstone, but the film returns to traditional footage when our lead gets home.
The central figure of the film is a young bride-to-be nearing the big day. As her body changes and she starts to lose that sense of ease, we find out her thoughts on the future. Our heroine doesn’t welcome her body festering and the inability to keep food down. But, she knows it’s a way to back out of her marriage. She loves her fiancee, but in the grand scheme of things…he comes in almost last for her. Elma Begovic does amazing work throughout the film, but she shines during the transformation. Not echoing a Goldblum or something else, Elma makes the body horror something else.
Feminine to a point, but realistic in operation…”Bite” explores what happens when everything goes wrong. While watching the film, I wondered if I could deem this the first of what seems to be a Millennial Horror wave. The access to everything, fear of missing out and ability to make everything about the lead is kinda stunning. I watched the film twice, but I still feel like I could go for another viewing. There is so much going on in every frame that it just keeps drawing me back. Check out the first really great horror film of the summer.
