Craig Boreham | Love Bite / 2008

the hunger

by Douglas Messerli

 

Craig Boreham (screenwriter and director) Love Bite / 2008 [3 minutes]

 

Not to be confused with the yuppie vampire film of 1993, Love Bites, Australian director Craig Boreham’s singular Love Bite of 2008 can’t quite even determine what genre it wants to invoke from its 3-minute duration.

      Gus (Aidan Calabria) and Noah (Will Field) have just smoked some weed and are getting hungry, when Noah, sitting with his friend on his bed, declares he has something to tell him.

      We ready ourselves, accordingly, for the shortest coming out film in history, only to be somewhat disappointed when Noah reveals that he not merely hungers for his friend, but has this terrible urge to take a bite out of him. Gus giggles, not quite knowing how to respond, but in any event, he doesn’t get a chance as Noah actually proceeds to take more than a little bite out of his suddenly bloodied and apparently dead friend.

     It’s hard to tell whether or not this is truly an LGBTQ film, since it depends upon whether we perceive this bite to represent that the boy is a vampire or a mere cannibal. The first at least calls up some sexual lust, while the second obviously is sexual only to someone like Jeffrey Dahmer, a turn off for most of the LGBTQ+ community and certainly for this writer.

      But even as a vampire flick, I’m afraid, Boreham’s little film doesn’t have much appeal.

     This director obviously needed a longer film to reveal his significant talents, very much on display in his film of the next year, Drowning.

 

Los Angeles, April 29, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2023).