Love Bite (2012)
Directed by: Andy De Emmony
Written by: Cris Cole, Ronan Blaney
Starring: Ed Speelers, Jessica Szohr, Luke Pasqualino, Timothy Spall
Love Bite (2012)
(15) Running time: 91 minutes
Director: Andy De Emmony
Writers: Ronan Blaney, Cris Cole
Cast: Jessica Szohr, Timothy Spall, Ed Speelers, Luke Pasqualino
Reviewed by: Matt Wavish
Coming across like a cheap rip off of The Inbetweeeners and any werewolf based horror film, Love Bite sadly lacks in comedy, and has little or no shocks. Clearly this is aimed at a very young audience, my guess is teens who haven’t left school yet, and the childish antics in the film become tiresome very quickly. The fart gags and sex jokes are funny for the first five minutes, and the horror barely registers.
The film is all about a group of school friends desperate to lose their virginity, and we join them as they attend a local party in the hope they will “get laid”. Cringeworthy one-liners and awful dialogue follow as we see these desperate misfits try and find a woman. Jamie (Speelers) meets the sexy Juliana (Szohr), a writer who is in town to work on a story. They become friends, and the next day Jamie discovers that Juliana is staying in the B&B he and his often naked Mother run. After a local lad disappears, the pair attempt to find out what happened, and it turns out that the town has a bit of a werewolf problem, and said werewolf is on the prowl for virgins to turn. Into the story comes werewolf hunter Sid (Spall), and his bizarre behaviour and strange appearance very nearly redeem the film. He warns Jamie to stay away from Juliana, and the great big mystery as to who the werewolf is follows.
Love Bite has two things to really enjoy: Spall as Sid is often hilarious, and a joy to watch, while Szohr as Juliana is so hot it is very difficult to concentrate on anything else. The film plays on her sexiness, and seeing her undress or do ‘sexual’ things with a banana are very welcome! Other than that, Love Bite fails, and is not an enjoyable, or even interesting film, let alone funny. A seriously wasted opportunity to make a cool British cult werewolf comedy was missed here, and I feel there was far too much attention to making the film accessible to a teenage audience, and the rest of us will feel left out. There were plenty of chances to take the film that little bit further and into darker territories, but there’s no balls here, and instead we get silly scenes involving guys playing that Dance arcade game, or the annoying fat girl chasing men around, and a constant punch-line style of comedy that never actually delivers a punch-line.
The film does have some redeeming features though apart from the two already mentioned. When the werewolf does finally appear, it is quite cool. Clever lighting and camera angles hide the films low budget, and enable the rather large monster to actually look impressive for most of the time. However, the horror is pretty much nonexistent in this film, and with no horror or anything remotely funny, Love Bite doesn’t really have very much to offer at all. Shame
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