In this case, the release is pretty bare bones, it doesn't even have subtitles. But the movie itself is far from mediocre.
When I first started watching BITE, I was thinking "Oh no, it's a POV film", luckily after the title blasted itself onto the screen, it turned into a normally filmed movie.
Thank God for that.
During the POV beginning, we meet Casey (Elma Begovic) and a couple of her friends partying away in Costa Rica for her Hen do, even though she keeps having second thoughts about getting married. When some creepy guy tells them about a secret swimming spot, they decide to go to it. One of them notices it's a little bit different to how it was described but they go in anyway.
Then Casey is bitten by something underneath the water.
When she returns home to her humdrum life and humdrum fiancee, she begins to change in both personality and body. The bite is changing her, giving her rashes and infections, slowly transforming her into something less human.
For a long portion of the movie, that's what it mainly focuses on, Casey's transformation.
Toward the end, something happens that changes the plot from then onwards to spice things up, making it less about the transformation and into something else. I won't say what exactly though as it'll spoil the ending.
It does make the film somewhat better yet somewhat worse as it's a cliched way to go and the actual thing that changes the plot felt very out of character for the person involved.
It has similarities with The Fly, and doesn't stand anywhere near that film in any way as it's a horror classic, however it does have its place in body horror movies and is much better than a lot of them.
Though it isn't the best horror movie, it's not bad by any means. It has a simple plot that's easy to follow and some truly disgusting visuals.
So don't watch while eating.
If you love horror and specifically body horror, I highly recommend the movie especially seen as the majority of the body horror is up there with Cronenberg's The Fly, even if the revealed full transformation left something to be desired. (It could have been worse, it could have been better).
Chad Archibald also did a great job at both co-writing the film and directing it.
It looks beautiful, dull, messy, awful and disgusting all at the same time.
You'll understand what I mean when you watch it.
The score is practically non-existent, it's mainly horrible noises with a little bit of a soft tune played behind it so you don't really notice it except for when the title card blasts onto screen. I think they took that idea from Insidious.
It's open to a sequel and I hope we get one, I also hope we one day get a special edition release of this movie with some behind the scenes or audio commentary at least. It would be nice to see/hear what Chad was thinking when he was creating the film and its creature.
In all, I'll give the film
6/10.
It's a decent film but has room for improvement.
I won't score the dvd itself because there's nothing to rate other than the movie.
You can pre-order the film by clicking here.