Bite Marks
Brewster, a truck driver who has lost his license takes a driving gig at the request of his morally bankrupt supervisor. Brewster is delivering a load of coffins to a funeral home. While headed to his destination, he picks up a gay couple who have decided to take a break from a backpacking excursion. When the 18-wheeler throws an axle, the trio find themselves stranded and in need of a mechanic. When the travelers investigate strange noises coming from the back of the truck, they encounter a pack of vampires. The group then becomes embroiled in a fight to the death with this nasty group of blood suckers.
As a whole, Bite Marks was "okay." I didn’t dislike it. I would even go so far as to say that I kind of liked it. However, I was left with the feeling that the pieces were better than the sum of its parts. It had some moments of greatness as well as some moments of mediocrity. There were some genuinely funny, witty, and inspired scenes, and there were portions of the film that dragged.
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The pacing is decent. Like the rest of the film, it wasn’t perfect. Bite Marks took some time to take off. The film was close to 45 minutes in before the action really began. However, once it did take off, I was fairly engaged for the rest of the film. The acting was up and down throughout the movie. There were scenes where the cast pulled off believable performances, but there were just as many, if not more, where the acting came off as stiff and uninspired. The casting of Stephen Geoffries in a cameo was fun to see. Geoffries essentially played a grown up version of his role Evil Ed from Fright Night. He even reprised one of his more memorable lines from the 1985 film. The rest of the cast seemed as though they were offered parts in the film because the budget didn’t allow for more expensive casting decisions. The film’s direction is fair. I thought writer-director Mark Bessenger did a respectable job in his directorial debut. The film’s dialogue was a mixed bag. The script was good in parts, but there were scenes where I found myself groaning. Bite Marks had several funny and well-executed scenes, but also some where the marriage of the script and the acting talent of the cast didn’t click. The script is very self aware. It reminded me a lot of earlier films like Scream and Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon in its eagerness to poke fun at the genre while simultaneously embracing it. Bite Marks has an obvious nostalgia and sense of respect for its predecessors. There were multiple Fright Night references as well as references to the horror genre, in general, peppered throughout the film. The camerawork was decent. Some of the scenes were a little shaky. The film looks like it was shot with a hand held camera, but that didn’t detract too much from its overall appearance. There were some editing issues, but nothing severe enough to ruin the movie. The cinematography was fairly well done. There were some nice scenic shots, towards the beginning. The film has an interesting storyline. I liked the way that it melded existing vampire lore and "rules" from past books and films with some of its own additions to the typical blood sucker code. It had a couple of interesting twists along the way. Although, pieces of the story were formulaic, Bite Marks broke the mold enough to make itself stand out. The effects were pretty average. They weren’t bad for a low budget film, but they also didn’t stand out as spectacular. Most of them were done practically, which is always nice too see. Overall, Bite Marks is worth checking out, for the genre fan. It doesn’t bring anything exceptional to the table, but there are worse ways to spend 82 minutes. |
