It’s always hard to be a parent when you’re wrestling with your demons, but it’s particularly hard when that struggle is literal. Little Bites, the latest directorial outing from Spider One, follows Mindy (Krsy Fox), a mother with a terrible secret: she’s trying to appease a demon by allowing it to feast on her, one nibble at a time. Utilizing demonic or similar entities as metaphors for parental psychological ills and struggles is a well-established narrative device, especially following films like Jennifer Kent’s masterpiece The Babadook and Jon Watts’ frightening 2014 outing Clown. It’s a film with several strong elements, though some issues in the scripting and execution limit its ultimate impact.

What Is ‘Little Bites’ About?

In Little Bites, we meet Mindy (Fox), a loving mother separated from her beloved daughter Alice (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro) for three weeks. She’s simply in no place to care for the girl: Mindy can’t sleep peacefully and is in constant pain thanks to the periodic intrusions of a dirty secret. At intervals throughout her day or night, she’s awoken by the ring of a bell. She drops whatever she’s doing and makes her way into a darkened room on her home’s first floor. Awaiting her is a demon, Agyar (Jon Sklaroff), who survives by feasting on Mindy’s flesh, one little chunk at a time. It’s a hopeless and impossible situation that leaves widow Mindy estranged from her mother (played with chilling frustration by Bonnie Aarons) and entrenched in misery, faced with the desperate need to find a new way forward when it inevitably becomes too much.

Krsy Fox and Jon Sklaroff Hold Their Own, Though The Narrative Has Issues
Image via Shudder

Little Bites is first and foremost a showcase for both stars Krsy Fox and Sklaroff. Fox, who also co-produced and edited the film, is closely followed as the subject of nearly every scene. She gives a strong performance as the besieged mother, capably exhibiting the character’s exhaustion, desperation, and pain. As Agyar, Sklaroff exhibits an aristocratic malevolence that seeps through his every word–an essential element for a film where audiences rarely see him squarely and well-lit. Sklaroff’s every word drips with blood and malice towards his prey; implied threats rarely becoming overt coercion because it really doesn’t need to. The rest of the cast is stacked with horror legends in even the smallest of parts, like the fantastic Barbara Crampton as a stern, well-meaning CPS agent and Heather Langenkamp as an empathetic stranger who knows exactly what Mindy’s been through, both delivering strong performances (as does Chaz Bono as the reserved Paul, whose role I won’t spoil).

The script, written by Spider One, is strong by and large. Mindy’s believably written, and there are a host of memorable lines (with Sklaroff’s Agyar getting the best ones). The biggest issue with the script is largely structural. Mindy’s journey here does progress, and she surely isn’t static, but the narrative’s progression is missing a tighter internal logic. Certain sequences feel less like a set of cause-and-effect links in a tight narrative chain and more like a set of makeshift encounters or choices, on occasion telegraphed too closely towards its intended plot progression. The scenes still often work, thanks to a talented and charismatic cast, but a greater honing of the film’s internal logic and making its points more organic and less overtly telegraphed would help it all land better.

As a claustrophobic, allegorical narrative about a mother isolated by her struggles with addiction (for which Agyar stands as a fairly clear metaphor), Little Bites is only intermittently at its best. Fox gives an earnest performance that hits the emotional lows well, and brief encounters with genre notables like Crampton and Langenkamp are certainly engaging. Agyar’s a memorable demonic presence that looks eerie onscreen and is backed by a wonderful performance. Still, it’s a film whose simple directness (points are often stated explicitly, usually one-on-one conversations) makes narrative moves and character evolution too transparent. Additionally, tighter internal logic between sequences and character choices would add tension and create a smoother pace, instead of feeling like a series of leaps between plot conventions. There are many things that work about Little Bites, but they’re commonly shuffled together with elements that don’t land as well as intended.

‘Little Bites’ Needs Little Adjustments
Image via IFC Films

A lot of individual elements work quite well in Little Bites. The creature makeup looks great, the performance is memorably threatening with elevated flair, and Krsy Fox carries the narrative well (and it asks a lot of her). There are some exceptional bits of dialogue and quite a few scenes that land easily thanks to appearances by horror titans. It’s a smooth enough ride through most of its runtime, but there are noticeably telegraphed or overly convenient plot contrivances and ever-transparent moments of exposition that carry themes too literally. There’s a lot of promise here, but it doesn’t all pay off, resulting in a decent film that stops short of being a great exercise in supernatural terror.

Little Bites is now in theaters in the U.S. Click below for showtimes.

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