Timothy Glaraton
There’s just something uniquely…nasty about bugs in horror films. Maybe it’s just my own aversion to all things creepy and crawly, but bugs just have a particular way of getting under my skin in a way not even the goriest dismemberments can. Almost all of my most unsettling horror encounters are bug themed—the Old House in Resident Evil 7, filled with all matter of nasties, the late ‘90s giant grossities like Ticks and Mosquitos, Oogie Boogie being pulled apart to reveal he’s just a giant mass of bugs in The Nightmare Before Christmas, or the giant insect that Jeff Goldblum so grotesquely transforms into in Cronenberg’s The Fly. Now, it looks like there’s soon to be a whole new breed of bug nasty in town: Biters & Bleeders.
If this first trailer is anything to go by, Biters & Bleeders—the debut horror short from New 32—is aiming to be the Midsommar of all things with six legs, a good old-fashioned bug nasty meets a modern, “elevated” horror film. What we see in the first trailer certainly has the look and feel of a Midsommar-type film, especially in terms of lighting, shot composition, and the soundtrack of tense, rumbling strings. Even the brief description steers us in the direction of that style of film, telling us about the crumbling marriage of Tad and Penelope and the inheritance of Tad’s grand family home following the sudden death of his mother.
But the real stars of the show are, you guessed it, the bugs. Oversized, vicious, nasty-looking bedbugs that are looking to eat their way through both Tad and Penelope’s new home and Penelope’s sanity. I once had a traumatizing run-in with some bedbugs, and the sight of both Penelope covered in blood and bites and a giant one forcefully making its way out of her mouth was enough to make me gag—and give me the same feeling that comes to torment Penelope, that of unseen…things crawling all over my skin. It’s one hell of a punch packed into a first trailer, and it’s gotten me intrigued to see what Biters & Bleeders has to offer—and how far I’ll be able to get before I need to take a shower. Or two. Or three.
Biters & Bleeders will debut on the festival circuit this year.
