JP Nunez
How far would a mother go to save her children? Horror movies have been asking and answering that question for decades, but none have done it quite like Little Bites. Most films use the tried-and-true trope of a woman who turns into a monster to keep her kids safe and/or healthy (or just alive!), but this one promised to take a different approach. I don’t remember ever seeing anything quite like it, so when I first heard about the movie, I was intrigued. I requested a screener as soon as I got the chance, and I couldn’t wait to see how it would tackle this age-old dilemma.
Little Bites was written and directed by Spider One, and it stars Krsy Fox, Jon Sklaroff, Elizabeth Caro, Barbara Crampton, Heather Langenkamp, Bonnie Aarons, and Chaz Bono. In the film, Mindy is a young widow with an old problem. At least, it looks very old. A seemingly ancient flesh-eating ghoul named Agyar lives in her basement, and it wants to consume her daughter Alice.
But like any good mother, she won’t let him harm her child. Instead, she allows the thing to slowly eat her, taking little bites (hence the name!) from all over her body, while the girl stays with her grandmother. At first, this arrangement seems like a win-win for everybody, but soon enough, the suffering becomes too much for poor Mindy to bear.
For the first 35 minutes or so, I really enjoyed Little Bites. It mostly eschews backstory and only gives us the absolute bare minimum needed to get our bearings, and it chooses to focus on the twisted relationship between Mindy and Agyar instead. That’s a risky choice, but thankfully, it works wonderfully. Both of these characters are excellent, so I had a great time watching them play out their depraved dance.
Let’s start with Mindy. She’s brought to life brilliantly by Krsy Fox, and this woman will completely convince you that she’s giving her entire self so her daughter can have a chance at life. You see it in every move she makes, every word she utters, and even her facial expressions, and there’s one scene in particular that really hammers home just how much she’s sacrificed.
Early on in Little Bites, Mindy goes to the supermarket to pick up a few things, and while there, she runs into a friend of hers. She tries to act normal, but it’s obvious that something is terribly wrong with her. She stutters and stammers her way through the conversation, and Krsy Fox makes it abundantly clear that her character is hiding a deep, dark secret. She’s a dead ringer for a victim of domestic abuse, so if you have anything resembling a heart, you can’t help but sympathize with this poor woman’s plight.
In contrast, Agyar gives off an air of complete confidence in both himself and his emotional and mental domination of Mindy. He sounds like an old British aristocrat transposed into a horrific key, and his contemplative, almost philosophical manner of speaking lets you know that he’s been around the block a few hundred or thousand times.
That unnerving tone is enough to send a shiver down your spine, but it’s not the only scary thing about this creature. He also looks like an old man who’s aged so much he’s started to decay a bit, and when he gorges on Mindy’s flesh, writer/director Spider One makes him sound as unsettlingly disgusting as possible.
Those amazing lead characters make the first 35 minutes of Little Bites an absolute joy to watch, but unfortunately, the next hour or so is a roller coaster ride of quality. The movie tries to expand its narrative horizons beyond Mindy and Agyar, but none of its subplots are anywhere near as interesting.
For example, at one point in the film, Mindy decides to take a page out of Hellraiser’s book by kidnapping a stranger and attempting to feed him to Agyar, and there’s also a CPS agent who shows up a couple of times to check on Alice. In theory, those story threads might sound promising, but in practice, none of them can capture the magic that made the first act so good.
To be fair, this part of the film does have its moments. Most notably, there’s a scene where Agyar is eating somebody, but you don’t actually see him do it. Instead, you just see Mindy holding the door closed so the monster’s prey can’t escape, and the sounds coming from that room are utterly hair-raising. It’s a masterclass in how to craft a great audio scare, and even though it doesn’t last very long, it’ll almost certainly make a big impression on you.
All of those ups and downs lead to a gory finale that’s just as fun as it is head-scratching, so it ends the film on an appropriately mixed note. It’s a well-crafted horror scene that I’m sure fans are going to get a kick out of (I sure did!), but if you stop and think about it for more than a second, you’ll realize that it doesn’t actually make much sense.
Last but not least, I want to talk about the message of Little Bites. As you can probably guess from the plot synopsis, this movie starts out as a metaphor for the various sacrifices parents (and especially mothers) have to make for their children, but it eventually turns into more than that. The film ends up having a surprisingly nuanced and thoughtful view of motherhood, and it even offers a critique of an infamously deficient approach to the job.
So when the credits began to roll, what were my feelings on Little Bites? As I said, this is a very mixed bag, so I didn’t love it. But I can’t say I disliked it either. There’s a lot of good here that I’m glad I saw, so I’d give the film a recommendation with a caveat. I don’t suggest spending money on it, but keep this movie on your radar. It’s almost certainly going to hit Shudder at some point in the not-too-distant future (although we don’t know exactly when), and when it does, I recommend giving it a watch then.
Little Bites is set to hit theaters and VOD on October 4.
