Little Bites

Sometimes, a film creeps up behind you and takes you by complete surprise by how remarkable it is. Doesn’t happen often, but when it does, you remember. So I will never forget the outstanding horror drama Little Bites, written and directed by Spider One. Mindy Vogel (Krsy Fox) dropped off her young daughter, Alice (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro), with Mindy’s mother (Bonnie Aarons) three weeks ago. Alice keeps asking her mommy when she will get to see her again. Mindy’s mommy keeps asking when Mindy will finally get her s**t together. However, nobody knows that Mindy is hiding something horrible from everybody. There is a monster (Jon Sklaroff) who lives in Mindy’s basement and needs to be fed. Mindy is trying to satisfy the monster by letting it drink some blood from her arm every day.

“…There is a monster that lives in Mindy’s basement who needs to be fed…”

Her arm becomes covered with bites, some of which are getting infected. Her hollowed-out appearance draws unwanted attention, and soon, Mindy starts getting visits from Sonya Whitfield (Barbara Crampton) with Child Protective Services. Sonya wants to interview Alice in person, just to make sure everything is alright. Meanwhile, Mindy is getting too weak to feed the monster anymore. The monster says that is fine. Just feed me your daughter instead. Desperate to find someone to feed to the monster instead of her kid, Mindy puts on some make-up and goes walking in the street, trying to find an unsuspecting morsel for the monster. That is when she spots Paul (Chaz Bono), sitting along at a bus stop…

I went into Little Bites knowing nothing about it except that Cher was executive producer along with her son, Bono, who was acting in it. I am not a Cher fanatic but did attend the comeback Vegas comedy show of a notorious comedienne who is. I had zip prior knowledge as to what a Spider One was and didn’t do any poking around before screening. I was expecting something campy that would hopefully have enough good influences to overcome budgetary limitations. This is all I ask of most indie horror pictures I seek out to review. So, I was completely caught off guard by the magnitude of how hard the horror hits and the unconventional methods used to make that happen. Right from the start, One establishes a strength and verisimilitude that is usually not seen in horror. The interactions between characters are tuned to come off as hard drama, except with the horror theme inextricably linked to all proceedings.