Bedbugs and Babies
“Bite” is a clumsy marriage of body horror and gender expectations.
Treating a film like a five-course meal is fun, but sometimes you just want to dress down and grab a greasy, cheap slice of a movie.
I’m not afraid to sink my teeth into the less- than-tasty helpings that horror sometimes has to offer. If even the schlockiest Z-horror film has something to say, I’ll check it out.
That’s how I ended up on my couch watching Chad Archibald’s Bite. Negative reviews weren’t going to scare me away from a film where a beautiful lady slowly mutates into a bug. Racking my brains, I couldn’t recall too many instances of full female transformation into something monstrous - outside of werewolf and vampire films. This flick was basically promising me a gender-bent The Fly.
So, good, bad, or otherwise, I sat down with some pizza and managed my expectations.
Bite is a fun movie. I enjoyed watching it. I definitely regretted eating during it. Living in fear of each pus-oozing bug bite close-up, I scarfed down some ‘za whenever some of the awkward character interactions popped up instead. Needless to say, I ended up very full.
The film centers around soon-to-be bride Casey (Elma Begovic). After an eventful bachelorette party in Costa Rica, she comes home with a pretty nasty souvenir: a large and gooey bug bite. Pre-wedding jitters soon become the least of her worries when she starts mutating into a bug-like creature.
Begovic does a wonderful job at playing a sympathetic, if passive, young woman riddled with looming adult anxieties. She’s easily the gross bug goo that holds this whole film together. Despite clunky dialogue and sometimes wooden acting from the other actors, it’s impossible not to feel bad for Casey.
The bite is almost the least of her worries. She doesn’t want to get married or have children, but doesn’t know how to tell her fiancé Jared (Jordan Gray).
He’s established in his career, ready for marriage, and surprises her with his old high chair as a welcome home gift. It’s safe to say that they lack any communication.
Yet Casey feels honor-bound to walk this “traditional” path: for some reason.
With a bit more finesse, Bite could have been a powerful message about the impact of traditional gender expectations on young women. Casey agonizes over her duties versus her desires. She feels compelled to see this marriage through. Her friends point out all of Jared’s marriageable qualities, but never discuss if the couple has any chemistry. They don’t, by the way.
I almost feel like this would have done better as a period piece. Casey acts like she’s literally not allowed to end the betrothal. Jared’s mother doesn’t want her “soiling” her son before marriage. I don’t even think Casey has a job. You never see her work, no job is mentioned, and she somehow still has an apartment that the Friends cast would be envious of. Throw in some corsets and you have yourself a pretty good Victorian-era body horror movie, if I do say so myself.
As it stands, we instead get a clumsy attempt at some kind of feminist message that women should be able to...be free to make their own decisions?
Groundbreaking.
It’s still an admirable and entertaining effort. Bite does a good job at tying Casey’s anxieties directly to her decline. She is not a “homemaker” type, according to her friends. This instinct she never had goes on to manifest as a symptom of her sanity slippage. She lays hundreds of boba-esque eggs in her sleep and does her best to make a suitable environment for them.
Stress accelerates her mutation. The first person she kills - her overbearing would-be mother-in-law - is completely on accident, with an acid shot to the face that would make the Brundlefly proud. Casey’s body intervenes where her brain would not. She hates the woman but does not stand up to her. As a partial bug creature, instinct takes over and a sharp-tongued woman who causes her nothing but stress is dealt with accordingly.
Jared wants her to be a wife and mother. These forced expectations make her into a perversion of that fantasy.
Do I think it was intentional? Probably not. With the focus on body horror close-ups, it’s more likely that the idea was to take a beautiful woman and make her as ugly as possible before the film ended.
Why? Because Casey goes out with almost no fanfare. When she and Jared inevitably have their showdown, she’s sporting a particularly lethal-looking scorpion tail. She’s pissed and ready to do some damage.
“Do you still think I’m pretty?” she says sarcastically, stalking closer to him. She is naked, her body covered in welts and open sores. Her hair has fallen out. Her teeth are all but gone. “Do you still want to have babies with me?”
She sums up what the pressure of these expectations did to her; it’s a wondrous moment. They fight, she stabs him with her scorpion tail a few times, and then Jared promptly stomps her head in like - well, like the bug she’s become.
And just like that, she’s dead.
She does receive one last posthumous revenge. Jared pops like a balloon full of mosquito eggs some weeks later, pregnant from their final penetrative encounter.
But her transformation, and the weight of what caused it, is too briefly mentioned for any real impact. We instead get a gooey half-formed mess that body horror and B-movie enthusiasts are going to love.
It’s safe to say that Bite bit off more than it could chew. I was, however, delighted with what it spat at my feet.
“Bite" is currently available on Tubi.
