In the last few years, there have been numerous horror films that take their audience for fools, shoving the metaphors down their throats rather than allowing them to ponder the meaning. Well, horror does need some level of perplexing ambiguity, some intrigue that makes you question its essence and significance the what the why, and many other things. When this is not the case, and it moves from the atmosphere to the point, it becomes less effective. This is among several things that occur in Spider One’s grossly disappointing (2024) Little Bites, a film that constantly has something to say that its characters are not allowed to say but rather the film feels the need to constantly intervene.
Krsy Fox whose upcoming film Terrifier 3 is also making rounds, plays Mindy Vogel a widow living through a horror that people wouldn’t wish on their enemies. She has placed her daughter Alice (Elizabeth Phoenix Cararo) with her mother (Bonnie Aarons) to shield her from Agyar (Jon Sklaroff), a demon living in one of the upstairs rooms who is rather like a more ghastly version of Nosferatu. Only partially seen she is an ersatz shark who constantly nibbles on Mindy, so that she has depth of scar tissue but is not consumed fully. It is a power and about addiction, the abusive type that lets one procreate but is incapable of raising the offspring. The key point that is supposed to sail through is that Agyar’s warm bells will attract Mindy time and again as long as it is for Alice’s sake. That is how wonderfully tough being a mother is. This is illustrated in the props of the shift of each scene, Fox appearing frailer and frailer as the seeking of Agyar, physical and mental, takes everything out of her.
Spider One takes this notion to an extreme as he introduces a series of virtual stand alone encounters, which effectively makes the narrative worse. Barbara Crampton plays a social childcare worker on ‘CPS’ named Sonya who arrives at Mindy’s house looking for Alice. Crampton does great in these scenes but they are so out of context when she really should not go around saying a child is with her grandmother for a couple of weeks because it is not a crime. Any event however is twisted artificially in such a sense that it causatively creates suspense what the secret of Mindy is. A similar scene is where Agyar walks home with a guy (Chaz Bono) from the bus station trying to make him feed her pet, but soon gets invited for thicker fries. In the end, the sequence is transformed into a mix of awkward humour and poor ice cream that has been improperly dosed hence leaving one confused about what they were intended to communicate about the lead. Little Bites portrays a chaotic upgrade in which every drama or moment however lasts less than 30 minutes even the legendary Heather Langenkamp appearing on screen loses any focus of attention as for this chaos filled strange moments.
It appears that the strange performances in some scenes and this chaos where playing the theme plays over playing a role may have contributed to this awkwardness in the characters. Glamor horror legends such as Crampton and Langenkamp come through pretty much unscathed as they ever do but in terms of the remaining cast, looking frightened and empowered is as common a look as feeling lost. It’s understandable how exchanges if we can call them that like the one between Mindy and her mother could be quite a bit fake, and that is an utter disappointment for most of the viewers who watch the film anticipating a suspension of disbelief. Fox tries her best (She must be in almost all of the scenes) and she is likely to be able to do this role again and for that, I would like to see her in different roles. However, it does seem disheartening that as an actress she is so capable yet in the end there is no direction for her character and performance in the film. Parenting is difficult, and so are the challenges posed in filmmaking.
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