Silent Bite (2024) review – Low-budget christmas caper is a technical nightmare

Welcome to Knockout Horror. We are continuing our season of Festive Frights leading up to Christmas 2024 with brand-new vampire horror Silent Bite. If you are looking to be spooked but in a kind of Christmassy way with lots of tinsel, snow; check out our Awful Advent category for tons more.

Wait a minute! Don’t I know these people?

Silent Bite follows a group of festively dressed bank robbers hiding out at a local motel on Christmas Eve. Only to realise that they are not alone and a group of vampire girls may just want them for Christmas dinner.

Hold on just one damn second! Simon Phillips… Sayla de Goede… those names sound really familiar. Where have I heard them before? God dammit! It’s Mr and Mrs Claus from the absolutely terrible The Nights Before Christmas. The movie we kicked off our Festive Frights season with. I swear I didn’t plan that; this was total coincidence.

Being perfectly honest, I didn’t even intend to watch The Nights Before Christmas. I just stumbled across it on a random Christmas movie channel. Silent Bite is something I threw on when I couldn’t find the movie I originally wanted to watch. What a horribly strange coincidence that I have tripped over another entry into this weirdly connected chain of Christmas horror movies.

It seems as though these movies are being churned out by British actor-turned-producer Mem Ferda. There’s are a whole ton of them, too. Most are obviously not Christmas-themed, but they all share one thing in common: terrible reviews from both critics and the horror-loving community.

This is another stinker!

Silent Bite has come along to carry on the tradition of terribly reviewed films produced by Mem Ferda, and it’s just in time for Christmas. This movie starts off wearing its inspirations on its sleeve. There is a distinct attempt to emulate the style and flow of movies like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. And when I say emulate, I really mean rip off completely.

“From the direction to the dialogue, there isn’t much in the way of originality here. Entire sections of the script go almost word-for-word with scenes from Tarantino classics.”

Seriously, it is pretty blatant at times. From the direction to the dialogue, there isn’t much in the way of originality here. Entire sections of the script go almost word-for-word with scenes from the aforementioned Tarantino classics. Whether it is characters arguing about their given codenames or Simon Phillips’s character, basically, completely ripping off Samuel L. Jackson’s iconic “Marsellus Wallace looks like a bitch” sequence, this is less “inspired by” and more “stolen from“.

I am sure the obvious person to blame for much of this is Phillips himself. You know, what with his derivative script work, and all. But it is clear that there are a number of dirty fingers dipped in Silent Bite‘s eggnog. It gets a bit frustrating at times. It’s fine to pay homage, but this is bordering on plagiarism. It completely misses on the style points and instead results in scenes that feel incredibly awkward.

That’s not the only problem

It’s not that the concept for Silent Bite is bad; it really isn’t any worse than any other low-budget horror. In fact, it’s not even all that poorly acted. I have to be honest, I wasn’t happy to see Sayla de Goede’s name again after yesterday’s shit-fest.

“Most of the cast do a pretty nice job… I actually think Phillips is quite a good actor, but he’s hamstrung by a script that misses on style points.”

She chews the scenery up just as much here as she did in The Nights Before Christmas, waving her hands around continuously like some sort of wind-up action figure and hamming things up tremendously. But most of the cast do a pretty nice job, with Simon Phillips, Luke Avoledo, Nick Biskupek, and Sienna Star all standing out. I actually think Phillips is quite a good actor and seems really versatile.

It just feels a bit ridiculous, and technically is a bit of a mess in such a specific way that is more than a little hard to ignore. For one, the whole reason the gang are hiding out at the motel makes little sense. The fact that the quartet of vamp girls are there also makes little sense. The gang go out of their way to get bitten, and not a single character has one solitary brain cell between them. They are insanely dumb, and that makes the cast predictable, robbing the movie of all tension. It’s quite frustrating.

The dialogue is absolutely packed full of exposition. Characters explain every little thing down to the very last detail. The viewer has not been trusted to fill in any blanks, which makes many of the conversations sound stilted. Not enough is done with the vampire girls, considering they are the interesting part of the film. The action takes well over 45 minutes to actually get going, as well. Silent Bite wants to be a stylish crime caper more than it wants to be a horror. That works against it in a big way.

There are so many technical issues

Some of the technical issues really stand out. Camerawork ranges from competent to really poor. Some of the shots are very weak, and the director’s insistence on using sped-up footage to reflect the vampire girls’ super-speed is incredibly hokey.

“Audio is horrendous; some of the absolute worst I have heard. There’s noticeable background hiss on every vocal track, making the movie sound incredibly cheap.”

There’s an actual camera glitch at one point in the movie that looks as though someone stepped on a wire, and they were forced to leave it in because the scene was so pivotal to the plot. Throw in some issues with points of focus, a few uninspired shots, and a dull location, and you have a rather lacklustre picture.</p>

Audio is horrendous; some of the absolute worst I have heard in a movie for a while. There’s noticeable background hiss on every vocal track other than those recorded close up to the camera. You can actually pick out the moment where the sound mixer starts the track and when they stop it, making the movie sound incredibly cheap. There is a ton of echo, a lot of noise, and awful acoustics throughout. Many of the vocal lines have been boosted, resulting in distortion, and it all just sounds hideous.

Our Scoring Philosophy: A Fair Fight

Horror is a genre that thrives thanks to indie film makers and low budget creators. At Knockout Horror, we firmly believe that every movie that we review deserves a fair fight. That's why we grade on a curve. Our star ratings are all about context, judging a film on what it achieves with the resources it has.

A 4-star rating for a scrappy indie horror made for $10,000 is a testament to its ingenuity and raw power. A 4-star rating for a $100 million blockbuster means it delivered on its epic promises. We don't compare them side-by-side; we celebrate success in every weight class, from the back-alley brawler to the heavyweight champion. Please keep this in mind when considering star ratings.

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