Short Film: Love at First Bite

At a scant 5-minutes, Audrey Zane’s 2024 short movie is a succinct little piece that starts off in a Halloween party. Christine (Kiara Petrucci) is dressed as a vampire – and you’d be forgiven for assuming that this is a film with characters acting like vampires. Clearly bored, she heads into the bathroom and discards her drink. Looking towards the mirror she produces fangs, which she can’t see as she casts no reflection. Yes, she’s a real vampire…

showing fang

On her way out of the building she sees another lady, Lilah (Elizabeth Baker), sat in the corridor, apparently drunk and dressed as a vampire. Christine approaches her and asks which vampire she is. Lilah says she is one of Dracula’s brides and Christine responds that it’s a coincidence as she is Dracula. As Christine explains that Dracula doesn’t need to be a guy, my mind went to some recent contention with a genre commentator railing against gender swapping Dracula. It seems to me that a creature who has mastered shapeshifting into wolf (or dog), bat and even “floating moats of dust” could happily shift between genders at will and as desired.

Lilah and Christine

Getting back to the short, Lilah noticed Christine in the party and noticed the social walls she erected, saying as much and Christine is impressed with her observational skill. Perhaps Lilah is doomed to be a meal rather than the bride of this Dracula but what if they were both vampires who were pretending to be vampires?

The imdb page is here.