Bite | |
---|---|
Directed by | Chad Archibald |
Written by | Chad Archibald Jayme Laforest |
Produced by | Chad Archibald Cody Calahan Christopher Giroux |
Starring | Elma Begovic Annette Wozniak Denise Yuen Jordan Gray Lawrene Denkers Barry Birnberg Daniel Klimitz Tianna Nori Caroline Palmer |
Cinematography | Jeff Maher |
Edited by | Nick Montgomery |
Music by | Steph Copeland |
Production companies | Black Fawn Films Breakthrough Entertainment |
Distributed by | Black Fawn Distribution United Front Entertainment |
Release date |
|
Running time | 88 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Bite is a 2015 Canadian body horror film written and directed by Chad Archibald, and starring Elma Begovic, Annette Wozniak, Denise Yuen, Jordan Gray, Lawrene Denkers, Barry Birnberg, Daniel Klimitz, Tianna Nori, and Caroline Palmer. It was produced by Black Fawn Films, MGM Productions and Scream Factory, and Breakthrough Entertainment. The plot is about a young woman who is bitten by a waterborne insect whilst in Costa Rica and suffers horrifying and transformative consequences.
Casey (Elma Begovic) celebrates her bachelorette party with her friends Kirsten and Jill in Costa Rica. She is second-guessing her impending wedding to her fiancé Jared Kennedy and is exasperated with Jared's mother, who happens to be Casey’s landlord. Casey gets bitten by an insect at one point during the trip but is too preoccupied to take notice, brushing it off as an ordinary bug bite. After returning home, her body begins to mutate gradually, her senses become abnormally acute, she can no longer tolerate the taste of food, and she is plagued by nightmares. When she wakes up one day, she finds there are insect eggs all over her apartment. Jared's mother invades Casey's apartment to angrily challenge her about her plans to marry her son, but Casey kills her when she instinctively spits acid into her face during an argument. Noticing she hasn't seen Casey for days, Kirsten becomes very worried and visits her, but Casey ends up killing her as well when she finds the body of Mrs. Kennedy and panics.
It is revealed that Jill is in love with Jared and deeply resents Casey for being engaged to him. In reality, she has been attempting to sabotage their relationship since Costa Rica, where she stole Casey’s engagement ring and got her drunk so she'd sleep with other men at the party (which Jill recorded to make it look like Casey cheated on him). Jill shows Jared the footage and seduces him. Thanks to her heightened senses, Casey hears the two as they have sex in Jill's car and becomes enraged. Later, when Jill enters Casey's apartment, she is overpowered and tied to a chair. When she wakes up, a heavily transformed Casey forces her to watch more of the footage, revealing that she had recorded one of the men taking Casey to his room to rape her after she'd become too drunk to fight back. After confronting Jill about her betrayal, Casey forces her to call for Jared, who then rushes into the apartment. Casey kills Jill in front of him, causing a fight between them. Although Jared is able to impale Casey, he is gravely injured when she uses her newly-grown tail to sting him. He drags himself back to his apartment and tries to make an emergency call, but fails.
A week later, the entire building has been quarantined. The police raid the house and find the bodies of Mrs. Kennedy, Jill, and Kirsten in Casey's apartment. They also find Jared in his own apartment, seriously-injured and already-mutated into some kind of human cocoon. When they try to help him, a massive swarm of insects hatch from the eggs in his body and attack the police. At the end of the film, two joggers are talking about an upcoming trip to Costa Rica. One of them is bitten by one of the newly-hatched insects, but she dismisses it as "just a bite".
Bite was released in 2015 at the Fantasia International Film Festival, Fantasy Filmfest, Film4 Fright Fest, Mile High Horror Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, Lund International Fantastic Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, Tucson Terrorfest, Night Visions Film Festival, Another Hole in the Head Film Festival, Monster Fest, Blood in the Snow Canadian Film Festival, and Texas Frightmare Weekend. A subtitled version was released in Madrid, Spain on June 7, 2016.
The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 50% based on 18 reviews, with an average rating of 5.81/10. [2] Metacritic reports an aggregated score of 57 based on 4 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [3]
The beginning of the film and character development in particular were criticized, with the relationships and acting being described as unconvincing and generic to the point of being parodic, while the complex themes and body-horror elements were generally viewed more favorably by critics, Brian Tallerico from RogerEbert.com called it "one of those early career horror entries in which the filmmakers don't quite nail the set-up or the landing, but the gooey center of the film works for those with a high tolerance for things that might make a majority of the population queasy." [4]
Phil Wheat from Nerdly had a slightly more positive takeaway after seeing the Frightfest 2015 screening: "Bite is a strange and claustrophobic tale of sexuality, horror, and bodily fluids that recalls the best of David Cronenberg (Rabid, Shivers, The Fly), even echoing of Roman Polanski's Repulsion in the isolated madness of Casey's condition. And as such is unmissable" [5] and Matt Boiselle from Dread Central stated that "Bite definitely has the chops to be the Fly of the new age and simply shouldn't be missed, especially if you're a gorehound on the prowl." [6]
Many audience members were apparently unprepared for the gruesome content of the film however, as Fantasia Film Festival co-director Mitch Davis said on Facebook, "I leave the BITE premiere for all of ten minutes and the following text lights up my phone: "2 people fainted. One girl is puking and another hit his head on the stairs". Truth." Davis also had special Bite branded barf bags handed out to the audience. [7]
SARS Wars is a 2004 Thai action fantasy comedy horror film directed and co-written by Taweewat Wantha.
Rec is a 2007 Spanish found footage horror film co-written and directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The film stars Manuela Velasco as a reporter who, with her cameraman, accompany a group of firefighters on an emergency call to an apartment building to discover an infection spreading inside, with the building being sealed up and all occupants ordered to follow a strict quarantine.
Quarantine is a 2008 found footage horror film directed and co-written by John Erick Dowdle, produced by Sergio Aguero, Doug Davison, and Roy Lee, and co-written by Drew Dowdle, being a remake of the 2007 Spanish film Rec. The film stars Jennifer Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Columbus Short, Greg Germann, Steve Harris, Dania Ramirez, Rade Šerbedžija, and Johnathon Schaech. It follows a reporter and her cameraman assigned to a pair of Los Angeles firemen who follow a distress call to an apartment building where they discover a deadly mutated strain of rabies spreading among the building's occupants; escape becomes impossible once the government descends upon the building to prevent the virus from spreading beyond it, and the pair continue to record the events that unfold inside, of which the film itself is the result. Quarantine features no actual musical score, using only sound effects, and differs in its characters, dialogue, and explanation of the virus from its source material.
Bitten is a 2008 Canadian black comedy vampire film directed by Harv Glazer. It stars Jason Mewes as a paramedic who rescues Danika, a female vampire, from an alley way.
The Children is a 2008 British horror thriller film set around the New Year holiday directed by Tom Shankland, based on a story by Paul Andrew Williams and starring Eva Birthistle and Hannah Tointon. The story centers around a virus that turns all children into blood-thirsty monsters during a winter vacation. The film premiered on 5 December 2008 and received positive reviews from critics.
Quarantine 2: Terminal is a 2011 American horror film and a sequel to the 2008 film, Quarantine. It was written and directed by John Pogue and produced by Marc Brienstock. The film stars Mercedes Mason, Josh Cooke and Mattie Liptak as passengers on an airplane where the mutant rabies virus from the previous film is now spreading, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing at a terminal that is promptly surrounded by the government, trapping the passengers and crew as they search for answers and a means of escape.
Thanatomorphose is a 2012 Canadian body horror film directed by Éric Falardeau. It was his directorial debut. it was first released on October 2, 2012, in Spain and has been shown at several film festivals since then, including the Fantasia Film Festival. Thanatomorphose stars Kayden Rose as a young woman that finds her body slowly rotting from a mysterious ailment.
Missionary is a 2013 drama thriller film by Anthony DiBlasi. It received its world premiere on July 25, 2013 at the Fantasia International Film Festival and stars Dawn Olivieri as a single mother caught up in one man's obsession with her.
The Drownsman is a 2014 Canadian horror/fantasy thriller that was directed by Chad Archibald, who co-wrote the script with Cody Calahan. The film had its world premiere on 2 August 2014 at the Fantasia Film Festival and stars Michelle Mylett as a hydrophobic young woman that finds that the cure might be worse than the fear itself. Filming took place in Guelph, Ontario during winter of 2013.
Suburban Gothic is a 2014 American comedy horror film directed by Richard Bates Jr. It had its world premiere on July 19, 2014, at the Fantasia International Film Festival and stars Matthew Gray Gubler as a young man who returns home only to find himself faced with the supernatural. The film was released in select theaters and via video on demand platforms on January 30, 2015.
Dementamania, also stylised as DementaMania, is a 2013 British horror film that was directed by Kit Ryan. The film had its world premiere on 23 August 2013 at the London FrightFest Film Festival and stars Sam Robertson as a software analyst that finds himself possibly going mad after receiving an insect bite.
Antisocial is a 2013 Canadian horror film and the feature film directorial debut of Cody Calahan. The film had its world premiere on 31 July 2013 at the Fantasia Film Festival and a sequel entitled Antisocial 2 was released in 2015. Both films predominantly center on Sam, a young woman that finds herself in the middle of a pandemic where infected people suddenly begin showing strange symptoms and violent behavior.
The Chosen is a 2015 American horror film starring YouTube personality Kian Lawley and Elizabeth Keener. The screenplay was written by Barry Jay Stitch, Andrew Scheppmann, and Ben Jehoshua, who also directed. The film was produced by Joe Dain, Miles Fineburg, and Jim Klock. It was released on July 24, 2015.
Convergence is a 2015 American horror film written and directed by Drew Hall. It stars Clayne Crawford as a police detective who, after being caught in an explosion, is sent to recover at a nearly-empty hospital that may be haunted. Ethan Embry and Mykelti Williamson co-star. It premiered at the FirstGlance Film Festival in April 2015 and was released in the United States on February 5, 2016.
Slaxx is a 2020 Canadian horror comedy film directed by Elza Kephart, who co-wrote the film with Patricia Gomez. The film is produced by Gomez with Anne-Marie Gélinas, and stars Romane Denis as a cashier in a clothing store who, with her fellow employees, is terrorized by a possessed pair of jeans.
The Dark and the Wicked is a 2020 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Bryan Bertino, starring Marin Ireland, Michael Abbott Jr., and Xander Berkeley. It follows two siblings who encounter a demonic entity at their familial farm after the suicide of their mother, who had long been caring for their infirm father.
I Am Lisa is a 2020 horror revenge film that was directed by Patrick Rea, based on a script written by Eric Winkler.
Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires is a 2018 British stop-motion animated action comedy horror film written and directed by Mike Mort, who also stars the titular lead role. The film follows Chuck Steel, a no-nonsense maverick renegade cop who is pitted against a horde of vampire-like beings who feast upon the blood of those who are drunk. The film parodies and pays homage to live action films of the 1980s. It had its premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France on 12 June 2018.
What You Wish For is a 2023 American thriller film written and directed by Nicholas Tomnay, and starring Nick Stahl, Tamsin Topolski, Randy Vasquez, and Penelope Mitchell.
Booger is a 2023 American body horror comedy film written and directed by Mary Dauterman in her feature directorial debut. It stars Grace Glowicki, Garrick Bernard, Heather Matarazzo, and Marcia DeBonis. The film follows Anna (Glowicki), who, while grieving the unexpected death of her best friend and roommate Izzy, is bitten by their runaway cat Booger, causing Anna to undergo an unusual bodily transformation.