Bride-to-be Casey (Elma Begovic) and her two friends Kirsten (Denise Yuen) and Jill (Annette Wozniak) are on a bachelorette party trip as the film opens. Using found footage style, we see the girls on the beach, at clubs, in their rooms, etc. Clearly, Kirsten is the nicer of the two friends, while Jill is a bit catty, and eager to film awkward, possibly even scandalous moments. Right from the beginning, “Bite” is drawn from the “cautionary” genre of horror films that teach us that if we would just never leave the safety of our couches, everything would be OK. And if you’re gonna be crazy enough to go all the way out of the country for a bachelorette party, don’t be stupid enough to go off the beaten path. That’s what the girls do one day, swimming in a beautiful lagoon when Casey gets bit by something. “It’s just a little bite,” she says. We know better.
When Casey gets home, the poorly-drawn characters take center stage for almost long enough to sink the film. We meet Casey’s fiancé, Jared (Jordan Gray), and her horrible soon-to-be mother-in-law (Lawrene Denkers). Jared is the kind of two-dimensional character really designed purely as another thing for Casey to worry about. When she returns from her trip, he greets her with an antique high chair (he wants kids, she’s not ready) and then goes to work. The allegory of a young woman being pressured to have children by a workaholic fiancé with a horrible mother is so broad that it almost approaches parody, but not quite, so the film lingers in that in-between space for a bit too long, in which we’re not sure how seriously we’re supposed to take these caricatures. The acting in these early scenes is rough, and even the framing feels off. You can tell the filmmakers and performers are kind of treading water until they get to the “good stuff.” Any horror fan will tell you, the set-up can often be more rewarding than the follow-through if it’s done well.
After the rocky first act, “Bite” starts to find its footing. The concept of pairing quarter-life crisis concerns with body horror starts to click as Casey begins to notice the bite on her leg is, well, oozing and growing. There’s also a bit of a sexual assault allegory in that we learn that Casey woke up on the beach without her clothes or her engagement ring during the trip, thinking that one of the guys she met there must have assaulted her. It's understandable that she’s too traumatized and scared to respond to what’s happening with her body.
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