Bitten: Jason Mewes and vampires. A natural combination.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 5:00AM
The basic premise is a paramedic named Jack (Mewes) is feeling down and unloved after his girlfriend left him for her yoga instructor. He wonders why no one will take care of him when he's taking care of everyone else. While this might seem a little 'emo', it's delivered with the typical Jason Mewes flair, and accentuated by his partner, Roger, played with perverse exhilaration by Richard Fitzpatrick. Naturally Roger steals the scenes whenever he is in them providing a caustic dousing of reality bred from being a lonely, bitter man with an irritable bowel.
On his way home, Jack finds a girl lying in the alley, covered in blood, with bite marks on her neck. She has no idea who she is, but refuses to go to the hospital. Like an idiot he takes her into his apartment, but hey, if he wasn't an idiot, we wouldn't have a movie. After ironically telling drug dealers to get off his street, Jack takes the poor waif into his place, cleans her up, and starts to fall in love (or the closest thing to it for these types of movies).
The story progresses with the obvious twist that this girl, who remembers her name is Danika, is a vampire. We don't get much on her back story, so we have to assume another vampire bit her and left her for dead in the alley. Maybe they're saving that vamp's introduction for a sequel.
Danika behaves like a junkie, but her drug is blood. Roger keeps making comments to Jack that he needs to dump this girl because she's draining the life out of him, that Jack looks like the walking dead, and other irresistible lines. Jack just gets in deeper and deeper, and the bodies start piling up.
The ending of this seems out of character with the rest of the film, but I will leave it for others to judge, not wanting to provide any real spoilers. Overall it's dark humor, including having a children's song play in the background while Jack mops up blood and wrestles bodies into closets and chests. There's surprisingly not a lot of gore, even though there's a lot of blood. There's a lot of sexual content and nudity, which made me glad I saw the edited version, just because that makes me a little uncomfortable. However, in the edited version I'm sure I missed a ton of great lines from Roger, the crass and classless guy we all have somewhere in a corner of our lives.
Jason Mewes surprised me by breaking out of the mold he got smooshed into with Clerks. Yes, he has a foul mouth, and once in a while gives a nod to that character, but mostly he's believable as a guy who just wants to have a normal life, a normal girlfriend, and never manages to get either. His co-star, Erica Cox, is a relative newcomer, and she does alright in her role as Danika. I think she was chosen more because she was willing to flash everything for the camera than for talent. A different actress might have been able to put a little more heart and soul into the character instead of making her a stereotype, but I don't think that was in the budget.
I'm sure this will eventually get released to DVD, and I may be brave enough to check out the unedited version. In the meantime if you get a chance to catch it on network television, brace yourself, make sure no one of tender sensibilities is in the room, and watch this surreal experience.
Reader Comments (1)
Thinks this sound like they stole the plot from Little Shop of Horrors for this one. Asks did Danika every say Feed me Seymore, er, Jack?