Marriage Bites – review

Director: Quinn Gardner

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

This one snuck onto Amazon, almost missed as their search engine for Prime videos goes from bad to worse, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to get when I pressed play. In essence it’s a character driven, horror themed comedy and I was rather tickled by it.

It starts with a couple of vloggers staking out a cemetery. After being scared by Milton (Darren Ewing) from the mortuary, they are confronted by a Goth/rock vampire and then we hear them got off-screen. We then move to Martin (Joe Komara), sat morose at the breakfast table. His voice-over tells us that he and his wife, Linda (Ashley Hargrove), have been married fifteen years and are kind of in a rut. They have a teen daughter, Morgan (Ava Connolly), and he has a boring job. Things are about to change…

bitten

Martin is out at night when a woman grabs and bites him, leaving him fallen to the floor. When he eventually gets up he is a vampire (and has a great set of bite marks). He gets home but can’t enter the house, phones Linda and, eventually, she invites him in – bemused by what he suggests is a role play. Interestingly he knows what he is and knows (by instinct or pop culture?) why he can’t enter the house. He discovers, in the bathroom, that he has no reflection and, when trying to shave by feel, cuts himself and immediately heals.

Linda and Martin

Getting in bed he decides that it will be torture, drawn by Linda’s aroma and neck. He eventually decides to sleep in the garage (or sit up, as he figures he’ll sleep by day). Linda has a dream and in it is Milton from the morgue and he is revealed as a vampire. In the morning Martin is in bed when Linda gets up and opens the shades. Martin leaps off the bed and then discovers he isn’t burning (later he’ll use sunblock as he’s worried about more direct sun). Of course Linda realises what he is and they research off the internet. They also discover he is horny (yes, the pep pops in their marriage), holy water burns (she gets some from a nearby church) and later we discover it will destroy a vampire if they are sprayed with enough. Strangely, given the holy water, crosses don’t work, neither does garlic, but staking kills, they have eye mojo and stabbing in the eye is icky.

doused with holy water

Later we’ll discover that whilst a deep bite turns, a nibble won’t immediately and it takes three, and the vampire is staking a claim to the victim being nibbled. We also discover that the town is suffering a bit of a vampire infestation. Later Martin will get Linda some fake fangs but the vampires can smell the aroma of someone still human. And, you know what, the film works, really quite well. The performances by Ashley Hargrove and Joe Komara are central to this; her exasperated at times, he trying to behave but also embracing his vampirism like a naughty schoolkid, with a genuine chemistry between them. It is their presences and performances that make this a genuinely funny flick. 6.5 out of 10.

The episode's imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK