'Little Bites' review - this monster metaphor needs a tighter edit [FF 2024]

Monsters as metaphors are nothing new to the world of fiction, allowing creators to find novel ways to explore the unknown through horror tropes. The genre has seen a surplus of films using this device in the 10 years since Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook was released to critical and commercial success, and we can now add Spider One‘s Little Bites to the list. It’s a well-intentioned film, with the musician-turned-filmmaker delivering a visually striking parental horror film that boasts a strong lead performance, but it suffers from a transparent script and some severe pacing issues.

Widowed mother Mindy (Krsy Fox, Terrifier 3) is in the middle of a depressive episode. She sends her daughter Alice (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro) to stay with her mother (Bonnie Aarons, The Nun) while attending to a hideous creature (Jon Sklaroff) that lives in her basement closet. “Attending,” in this case, means allowing the creature to bite Mindy all over her body whenever it rings its dinner bell, slowly consuming her flesh as she grows weaker and weaker. Realizing she cannot continue living this way, she decides to take a stand against the creature before it can latch its jaws onto her daughter’s flesh.

Trailer

IMDb