‘Little Bites’ (2024)

A horror movie relaying the plight of a single mother, ‘Little Bites’ follows Mindy (Krsy Fox) as she endeavors to protect her daughter Alice (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro) from an evil force that torments Mindy.

Plain and unhindered, the film opens with Mindy encountering the antagonist Agyar (Jon Sklaroff), an evil creature dwelling in her basement, as he rings a dinner bell to demand food. Mindy yields and allows for Agyar to bite her. Suffering tremendously, Mindy has sent her daughter away to her grandmother’s until she deems herself fit to invite Alice back home. Unembellished, ‘Little Bites’ is plain in communicating its message about the strife of motherhood.

As Mindy battles the physical embodiment of depression, fear and anxiety, the film chronicles her battle with Agyar. Seeking to reason with it, to bargain and plead, Mindy understands that nothing will soothe the being besides its demand to eat her. A chance encounter with a stranger at a park eases Mindy’s mind as she talks with an elderly woman. Learning that her best chance to move forward is together with Alice, Mindy gets a new outlook on life.

The highlights of the film lie with its main actors. Fox’s Mindy is a woman at the end of her rope. Not dancing around the subject, we meet her at her lowest. Drained of life and hanging on by a thread, the woman tries to charge forward as she is literally being eaten alive by the darkness that dwells within. Not trying to be subtle and leaving a little room for interpretation, Fox brings to the screen a person distraught and exhausted. Downcast by the loss of her husband and afraid to raise her daughter by herself, Fox illustrated the psychological torment by way of physical ailment.

Conversely Jon Sklaroff delivers the shadow dwelling monstrosity of a being through Agyar. Possessing eloquence and a dominant tone in conversation with Fox’s Mindy, Sklaroff inhabits a singular and disturbing presence. Every scene Agyar appears in conveys an unease unparalleled by the greater majority of recent horror film creatures, monsters and villains, as even without any jump scares or overly-gory exhibitions, Agyar commands the room and inspires an air of terror entirely commanded by him.

The truly horror inducing scenes of tension arise though the interplay between Mindy and Agyar. The fear stemming from Fox is exacerbated by the toned down yet intimidating exchanges Agyar controls. The two converse, but it is only through their last ‘civilized’ conversation that Mindy’s dominance of the conversation can be felt, as the woman attempts to reclaim dominion over herself.

Dropping off drastically in the third act, the film resorts to a more conventional horror film approach. Agyar leaves his domain of the basement and seeks to torment and face Alice, resulting in a screeming match between Fox, Caro and Sklaroff. Lessened in his command of the room, Agyar invites Mindy to succumb to him, lest he go after Alice. At the same time, Alice evaluates the situation and unwilling to lose her mother, starts to feed on Agyar, with the two finishing him off in the end.

Perhaps not intended to be subtle, ‘Little Bites’ does very well in its initial stages, establishing a dominating and corrosive relationship between Mindy and Agyar, where the film goes through no pains to disguise the monster as anything but a mental disorder. Packing in a handful of effective scares and an excellent depiction of the characters, ‘Little Bites’ falters during its climax. Perhaps leaving the scene too abruptly, the film concludes in a very much anticipated manner, failing to deliver on any final scare, slightly undercutting the impact Agyar had on Mindy and Alice.

Score: 2/4