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'Halloween horror movie reviews' Bitten
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Vampire movies can be hit or miss with many people. Either the vamp-action is not enough, or the story is ridiculous. Then we have Bitten, which will surprise many to see Jason Mewes in the lead role. For those that don’t know who Jason Mewes is, he is pretty much only known for portraying the character “Jay” from the comedy duo of Jay and Silent Bob, who appear in just about every Kevin Smith movie (Clerks, Dogma, Chasing Amy, etc.). He also had a brief part in the movie Feast. Besides all that, Bitten proved to be unique entry into the plethora of vampire tales that are out there. 
The story starts out with Jason Mewes as paramedic Jack on the graveyard shift. His life is a social mess and that drives him to a depression of sorts. He has one friend in Roger, who is his partner on the graveyard shift. Roger is 30 years older than him, and he lives for the job. Other than that, Jack’s life is pretty sad. His girlfriend cheats on him and leaves him. Plus he lives in a building where drug deals go down constantly. One night on his way home, Jack sees a girl who is badly injured near his building. For some reason he decides to take her to his apartment and help her out. After he gets her cleaned up, Danika, hangs around the apartment. Jack doesn’t object to this and feels a bit better about himself due to some social interaction with a hot chick. However, Danika starts acting weird and shows signs of strange behavior. Jack’s cheating ex-girlfriend shows up randomly to pick up some of her things and sees Danika in the apartment wearing her clothes. Danika doesn’t like her reaction to her being there and we get our first vampire kill!
Jack comes home to see what Danika has done but actually doesn’t mind it. Danika seems to be fine around him but still needs to feed. Jack, who clearly doesn’t want be alone again, decides to keep her around and feeds some of the low-life’s to her that live around his building. However, the thirst always prevails and Jack starts to realize that he can’t keep Danika under control for the long-term. He realizes what she is becoming. A decision has to be made by Jack and Danika.
Sounds like a sad story right? Well, it is but the flick never takes itself too seriously during all the drama. The script doesn’t allow the characters to be ignorant about the situation either. We (the audience) see when Danika is a true vampire, and so do the characters. As mentioned above, Jason Mewes plays more than just our favorite stoner this time around. He shows that he can still be a wise-guy one minute and a tormented soul the next. He actually has conversations that have substance with his pale Roger about all the crap that he is dealing with by having Danika stay with him. There are some real funny moments that are timed well throughout the film. Then they balance those out with some real moral issues that the characters struggle with.
However, we do have some faults. All the vamp-action in the movie takes place in Jack’s apartment. They don’t have the environment to do anything cool with the kills besides showing the typical vampire speed of Danika when she jumps on her victims. Besides Jack’s apartment, we have a few shots in a clinic where the paramedics work and a couple of alley shots around Jack’s apartment. My guess is that they were trying to show the true depression of Jack by putting us in the same place all the time. The acting isn’t all that good, but it isn’t unbearable. Danika is a hot vampire chick, but is limited in her ability to make us feel threatened or believe the pain she is going through with regards to her curse. Roger is your typical one-liner guy with dirty jokes, but a lot of those miss due to his poor delivery. The rest are just victims for Danika. The story doesn’t develop or give any background, so if you are looking for reasons why this is all going on, forget about it. One must take this flick for what it is.
Overall, an under-the-radar dark comedy that kind of reminded me of Evil Dead at times. You won’t be scared unless you have dealt with depression before and can relate to Jason Mewe’s character. Bitten is worth a watch because of the unique delivery of a vampire tale, but don’t expect anything too memorable.
This month, 13 random horror movies will be posted and reviewed all the way up until Halloween. Be sure to check back for the next one! They will be listed under Halloween and/or horror.
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