Main cast: Rodrigo Massa (Ben), Robyn Gallop (Rose), Caroline Concordia (Tiffany), Sarah Freia (Kathy), Jim Saunders (Charles), and Ayan Elmi (Doctor Reindall)
Director: Justin Harding
You know that Urban Legend about spiders erupting from some woman’s boil on her face, after being bitten by a spider while sunbathing?
That’s The Bite, taken to a more dramatic extent of course, and it’s definitely not an episode for people that are not fond of spiders or bad CGI.
Here, Rose and Ben are a couple that are directed to a nearby secluded, lovely beach by some woman in a hotel.
Naturally, it’s perfectly sensible and sane to wander off in a foreign location based on directions from someone they just met, because the world is such a lovely, welcoming place these days.
Instead of getting abducted and harvested for their organs—that’s a different urban legend, as well as a few different movies with that premise–it’s worse. While Rose is sunbathing, a spider leaves a bite on her face.
Soon, she’s starting to look like a lovely, ripe zombie, with the obligatory spiders bursting out of the rashes and boils on her face and worse. Oh dear, are there enough aesthetic treatments out there that can help restore her looks?
Really, the CGI spiders are awful. It’s very apparent that it’s the same fake spider crawling reused so many times in a single scene, because they all move their limbs in unison and travel in a straight line at the same pace.
Sure, one can say maybe the CGI budget isn’t that awesome, but then why show those things? Not everything needs to be shown in great clarity, and I’d argue that sometimes things are more frightening if certain key details had been left vague. In the case of bad CGI, it’s always better to just skip it altogether instead of hoping that the audience is too drunk or high to notice.
That aside, this is another episode that is perhaps too faithful to the tropes, because it feels like every other woman gets bitten and goes cray cray horror tale out there. The guy is a patronizing, skeptical ass, so is the doctor, et cetera, and oh yes, the woman becomes a monster in the end and turns on her man. It’s all been done many times before, and this episode feels like a by the numbers rehash because it doesn’t do anything that is interesting or unique to these tropes.’
Just like the previous episode, this one feels dated and forgettable by the standards of present day. Sadly, it doesn’t even sting, much less bite, as a result.
