There’s an abundance of horror movies lately that underestimate the emotional intelligence of their viewers, choosing to pound home their metaphors instead of leaving them with unanswered questions. Horror needs to be a little gray, a little hard to decipher, a little debatable as to its meaning and purpose. When it’s not, and it shifts from mood to message, it loses its power. That’s one of several things that happens with Spider One’s frustrating “Little Bites,” a movie that constantly puts its themes in its performers’ mouths instead of letting them play actual characters and trusting us to meet the film halfway.

Krsy Fox, also at FF with “Terrifier 3,” which I couldn’t stay awake for on opening night but will get to before it opens, plays Mindy Vogel, a widow we meet in a living nightmare. She has sent her daughter Alice (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro) to live with her grandmother (Bonnie Aarons) as a way to protect her from the demon living in a basement room in their home, a creature named Agyar (Jon Sklaroff) that looks a bit like Nosferatu. Seen mostly in shadow, it’s a humanoid monster that feeds off Mindy, scarring her with ‘little bites’ instead of just devouring her outright. It’s a form of control, and a metaphor for addiction—a monster that often feeds off parents in a way that makes them incapable of raising their children—but also just the difficulty of motherhood. The repeated point is that Mindy will answer the bell every time that Agyar rings it if it keeps Alice safe. Motherhood is tough. And this is conveyed through scene after scene of Fox looking increasingly drained by her situation as Agyar physically, mentally, and emotionally abuses her.

There’s a short film in the concept of a demon that literally drains the lifeforce of a single mother, but Spider One expands that idea past its breaking point with a series of what are basically standalone encounters. A CPS worker named Sonya (the great Barbara Crampton) appears on Mindy’s doorstep, wondering where Alice might be. As good as Crampton is in these scenes, they make little narrative sense in that it doesn’t seem particularly illegal to say that a child is living with their grandmother for a few weeks, but they’re poorly shaped in a way that’s designed to produce tension that Mindy’s secret might be revealed. Ditto a scene in which Mindy brings home a guy (Chaz Bono) from the bus stop to try and give Agyar a heartier meal. This sequence turns into awkward comedy involving some poorly drugged ice cream, unsure of what it’s trying to say about its protagonist or her desperation. Every exchange in “Little Bites,” even a one-scene appearance by the great Heather Langenkamp, feels unnatural, either weighted with metaphor or uncertain about its characters.

It’s likely this narrative inconsistency and direction to play theme instead of reality that leads to some of the wooden, awkward performances. The horror icons like Crampton and Langenkamp make it out unscathed—they always do—but almost everyone else looks lost as often as they look frightened or empowered. Exchanges like the ones between Mindy and her mother don’t sound remotely genuine, which constantly breaks the spell that a film like this needs to cast to be effective. Fox is giving it her best shot—I’m pretty sure she’s in nearly every scene—and I’d be interested in seeing her challenged by a part like this again, but it’s so disheartening to watch someone give their all to a movie that doesn’t really know what to do with her character or performance. Motherhood is tough. So is filmmaking.

This review was filed from the world premiere at Fantastic Fest. It premieres on Shudder on October 4^th.