Bite
2018 · 5m
Directed by Jack Pirie
Genres: drama, horror, surrealism
Rejected from yet another audition, a dancer returns to her rehearsal space late at night, but when her reflection takes on a terrifying life of its own, she must conquer her self-doubt before it devours her.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The reflection-as-antagonist thing is horror 101, and the metaphor lands with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer—self-doubt made literal is exactly the kind of safe surrealism that thinks it's transgressive because it's a little dark.
A formally competent descent into psychological horror that understands its lineage—Polanski's apartment trilogy, the carnival mirror tradition—but doesn't quite crack the formal problem of how to make the reflection's autonomy visually *necessary* rather than merely symbolic.
The mirror's distortion physics and the sound design choice to desynchronize the reflection's movement from the dancer's breathing—that's the specificity that elevates this from concept to craft, and it's where Pirie earns the surrealism.