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.
Little Bites marks the third feature for Rob Zombie’s younger sibling, following 2022’s Allegoria and last year’s Bury the Bride, and he shares his brother’s penchant for casting his wife in lead roles. Fox is strong as Mindy, thankfully, as she has to carry the film for the bulk of its runtime. Her transition from meek to assertive feels earned thanks to her performance. Aarons, meanwhile, feels like she’s acting in a different movie entirely, injecting a dose of camp into a film that is anything but. Sklaroff successfully acts through layers of makeup, making the most of his screen time while spending most of it crouched on a closet floor.
Cameo appearances from horror royalty like Heather Langenkamp as a fellow mother offering Mindy sage advice and Barbara Crampton as a Child Protective Services worker are welcome, though Crampton’s two scenes likely could have been condensed to one to help alleviate the aforementioned pacing issues. Chaz Bono also shows up in another cameo as a potential replacement victim for the creature (notably, his mother Cher is credited as an executive producer on the film).
Working against Little Bites is the fact that there’s nothing particularly novel about its premise. The monster being a metaphor is nothing new to the horror genre, and Spider One’s screenplay makes it fairly obvious from the beginning what that metaphor is. It’s a weakness that the writer/director can’t seem to overcome, creating a frankly languid pace as the film lumbers along to its finale. A tighter edit would have improved things greatly, as there’s a solid 90-minute movie buried somewhere in this 105-minute one.
Thankfully, Little Bites does show signs of life once Caro’s Alice enters the picture, leading to a final confrontation with the creature that really works in the film’s favor. It’s not quite enough to justify the earlier narrative missteps, but that it sticks the landing is laudable.
While the screenplay suffers, the same cannot be said of the film’s technical aspects. Spider One has a keen visual eye, and he film gets a lot of mileage out of shadows, especially when hiding the creature. Makeup effects are equally impressive, be it the creature itself or Mindy’s gruesome bites. Said bites hit hard, with each one sounding particularly juicy thanks to the film’s strong sound design.
Little Bites shows signs of promise from the burgeoning filmmaker, but an obvious script and sluggish pacing keep it from becoming something truly special.
Little Bites had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest and will be released in theaters and VOD on October 4th.
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