This one starts very strong. Mindy Vogel (Krsy Fox), a single mother, is summoned to her basement by the ringing of a bell. A barely glimpsed monster with a lugubrious but threatening voice demands that she feed him. They engage in a dialogue from which we infer this is something of a long-term dynamic, with the grim beast nibbling from her arm on a regular basis. She tells him she’ll need to go to the hospital if this carries on much longer; the abusive relationship parallels are not accidental. This monster is dangerous, but he’s also a parasite, standing in contrast to the horror genre’s typical one-munch-and-you’re-done type beast.
Unfortunately, from this point on the drama sags. Fox’s performance is top-notch, but there are a number of plot points that don’t really stack up. That might not matter in a loopier story-world, but Little Bites is a horror movie where everything is fairly grounded, other than the actual creature. Chief among the dud notes is the unlikely idea that Child Protective Services would so aggressively hunt down a single mother on the flimsy grounds given here (seemingly amounting to the fact that Mindy’s child is staying with her grandmother).
