Love Bite (2012)

I do not know where to start with this film, it seemed to get worse and worse as it went along. The plot seemed like it had been strung together in a matter of a few days with a lack of detail and depth to the story. It feels like only a few of the attempts at humour happened to work but the majority fell flat leaving me cringing on the sofa wishing I had not just seen what I did on screen. Love Bite as you can guess from the title is about a romance developing within the loosely tied werewolf plot.

The film begins showing four typical boyish lads hanging out together and talking about ooh surprise surprise girls and how they will try to pull them. When The Vaccines started playing I thought that this film had some potential with an appeal to a younger audience with a quirky taste but I was wrong as it went downhill fast. The story consists of a werewolf being in the town who preys and eats virgins *cue the non existent laughter* because their meat is more tender. The cast of a hot girl who is the suspected werewolf, two really good looking guys and two average guys who are the group of friends are the backdrop for the whole plot with the boys trying to lose their virginity and the girl who appears to tease the main character Jamie and disappears every full moon. Then comes the two suspicious cops that don't do their job when teens start to go missing in the going nowhere town Rainmouth, giving a hint that something is wrong with the cops as surely they would want to know what has happened.

In between this and the last half an hour of the film is a lot of teenage groping and kissing. Yawn. With Jamie longing for Juliana we finally find out that she is not the werewolf but actually a werewolf hunter. Following what should be a touching moment when Jamie's friend Kev played by the gorgeous Luke Pasquilino is infected by the werewolf and turns into one causing Jamie to have to shoot him, which he appears to soon forget when he sees Juliana and they begin to have sex but not quite as they are rudely interrupted. A few more deaths happen including one of the police men and the werewolf appears and is quickly dispatched by Jamie. And low and behold the werewolf was the other policeman. If this was the big twist in the film that was supposed to shock the audience then it failed because I spotted it a mile off so the mystery surrounding the creature was ruined early on.

Juliana in all this action appears to have been infected and Jamie just cannot bring himself to kill the girl he has fell for in just a matter of weeks so infects himself to show his love and devotion *note the sarcasm* so ironically the two people trying to kill the werewolves become the evil creatures themselves and embrace it a little too easily. One of the only parts of the film that made me smirk was the ending with Jamie and Juliana sat inside a cafe watching a church full of virgins and commenting on how hungry they are to the waitress yet they only order coffee. What the waitress doesn't know cannot hurt her.

The only redeeming quality of the film appeared to come from the sound and mise en scene setting of the fairground that was a perfect place for the chaotic action shown full of chasing, looking for others and disappearing between flashing lights. The locations within the film appeared limited to only a few including a cabin, a fairground, a boarding house, a chippy, a pier and woods proving to be a good choice to highlight the small town characters who struggle to do the things they want to do. I think the aim was to show a misunderstood lad stuck in a no good town and who wants to be something bigger and better which he thinks he can be when Juliana arrives to town and appears to be everything exciting and fun as she is an American who travels the world. However in a bid to show this they lacked the well needed emotion behind it as they tried to replace the bits these moments should have been shown with humour. The well needed balance did not exist which I think is why I feel the film was not successful in my eyes.