Welcome to Los Angeles, Where Everyone Sucks (Literally and Emotionally)
Bit (2019) is not your typical vampire flick. There are no sparkly stalkers brooding in high school cafeterias, no Victorian counts swirling capes around candelabras. Instead, we get something much more refreshing — and delightfully deranged.
Brad Michael Elmore’s film throws out the dusty coffin tropes and replaces them with neon lights, punk energy, and a blood-soaked manifesto: no men allowed. It’s a horror-comedy, a queer coming-of-age story, and a chaotic feminist revolution rolled into one gloriously messy, undead cocktail.
The film stars Nicole Maines — yes, the same trans icon from Supergirl — as Laurel, a young woman who discovers that being a vampire in L.A. is somehow less toxic than being a woman on Tinder.
The Setup: Fresh Blood Meets Feminist Fang Club
Laurel is an 18-year-old trans woman fresh out of high school and ready to reinvent herself. She moves to Los Angeles to stay with her brother Mark, a well-meaning himbo who has the emotional depth of a beach towel.
Things start off normal — if by normal you mean immediately getting swept into a nightclub run by Duke (Diana Hopper), a vampire matriarch who looks like she spends her nights feeding on misogynists and her mornings browsing vintage jackets on Depop.
Duke leads an all-female coven dedicated to two things: killing predators and maintaining a strict “no men” policy. You can already tell this isn’t your grandma’s vampire coven. These ladies don’t sparkle — they shimmer in the light of burning patriarchy.
After Laurel is bitten by Izzy (Zolee Griggs), Duke tosses her off the club roof as a twisted initiation test. She survives, of course, because she’s a protagonist — and also because apparently, gravity respects character development.
A Vampire’s Guide to Feminism 101
Duke soon explains her worldview: men are too power-hungry to be trusted with immortality, so she runs her coven as a kind of supernatural sisterhood for the undead. They punish rapists, sleazebags, and anyone who thinks “nice guys finish last” is a valid personality.
It’s like The Craft, but everyone’s immortal and allergic to male entitlement.
Laurel, understandably, is both fascinated and horrified. On one hand, she’s found a community that empowers women like her — people who own their identity and their hunger. On the other, she’s realizing that “no men allowed” can start to sound a lot like “no morality required.”
Still, she tries to fit in. She feeds, she flirts, she makes out with Izzy, and she learns that Duke’s secret power comes from feeding off the still-beating heart of her vampire ex, Vlad — the original undead misogynist.
Yes, Vlad the Impaler himself is reduced to a literal power source. If that’s not poetic justice, I don’t know what is.
Power Corrupts (and So Does Immortality)
The movie’s big twist? Duke isn’t quite the feminist hero she pretends to be. She’s been using Vlad’s dark magic — and some light hypnosis — to keep her coven loyal. Essentially, she’s turned her trauma into a dictatorship, which is something every Twitter activist has been accused of at least once.
Meanwhile, Laurel struggles to reconcile her own morality with her newfound power. She wants to use her fangs for good — not for feeding on frat boys just because they said “smile more.” But being undead has a way of complicating your ethics, especially when your appetite for justice (and blood) starts growing faster than your self-control.
Things get even worse when Laurel accidentally bites her brother. If sibling drama was awkward before, try explaining that you gave your brother eternal life by mistake.
Enter Vlad, Toxic Masculinity Personified
Every good feminist horror needs a villain, and Vlad (Greg Hall) delivers in spades. He’s an ancient vampire, Duke’s old master, and a bloodsucking embodiment of male ego.
He’s manipulative, controlling, and just sentient enough to monologue about how Duke should be grateful for the power he “gave” her — the kind of guy who’d probably DM you after ghosting to say, “You up?”
When Vlad breaks free, all hell breaks loose — literally and metaphorically. He reclaims control of the coven, berates Duke for being ungrateful, and tries to reassert the patriarchy one vein at a time.
But Laurel isn’t having it. She sets him on fire (as one does when confronting ancient evil and outdated gender norms), and then leads the remaining vampires in a glorious, fiery rebellion.
Feminist Coup d’État, Now With Extra Blood
In the end, Duke’s coven turns on her. They realize she’s become exactly what she fought against — a tyrant drunk on power and privilege.
Laurel, who’s come full circle from shy newcomer to reluctant leader, locks Duke in her own basement prison and assumes control. But unlike Duke, she doesn’t hoard power; she shares it.
In the film’s best moment of poetic irony, Laurel and her coven feast on Vlad’s still-beating heart — a literal and metaphorical devouring of toxic masculinity. Nothing says empowerment quite like eating your oppressor’s vital organs together.
It’s messy, it’s ridiculous, and it’s absolutely perfect.
Style, Substance, and So Much Sass
Visually, Bit looks like a neon fever dream — the kind of movie where every frame could be a music video for a goth band named after a menstrual pun. Cinematographer Cristina Dunlap drenches everything in lurid pinks, blues, and purples, turning L.A. into a glowing, glittering hellscape where blood looks almost romantic.
The soundtrack by Wolfmen of Mars pulses with synth and swagger, giving the film the energy of a queer house party that accidentally summoned the devil but decided to keep dancing anyway.
What makes Bit so refreshing is its humor. It’s aware of its absurdity — the characters throw out lines like “No men, no masters” between decapitations — but it also knows when to slow down and hit emotional notes.
Nicole Maines plays Laurel with warmth and bite, balancing her character’s vulnerability with a fierce sense of agency. She’s a trans heroine written not as a metaphor, but as a person — flawed, funny, and fully alive… well, undead.
The Message: Eternal Life, but Make It Intersectional
At its core, Bit is about power — who gets it, how it’s used, and what it does to those who hold it. It’s a bloody, neon-lit allegory for modern feminism, exploring how trauma and empowerment can blur into each other until you can’t tell which side you’re on anymore.
It’s also one of the few vampire films that feels genuinely fresh. The trans representation isn’t a token gesture; it’s integrated into the story in a way that feels both natural and subversive. Laurel isn’t the “other” — she’s the new standard. The film argues, quite literally, that the future of the vampire myth belongs to women, queers, and anyone who’s tired of being hunted.
Final Thoughts: Stake Through the Patriarchy
Bit is a chaotic, stylish, gloriously self-aware bloodbath — a queer feminist horror that manages to be both empowering and hilarious in its absurdity.
It’s the kind of movie that will make you cheer when a vampire says, “We don’t make men,” and then eat the heart of an ancient monster to prove the point. It’s camp with conviction, gore with purpose, and feminism with fangs.
Sure, it’s rough around the edges, a little disjointed, and occasionally too proud of its own metaphor — but who cares? The film bleeds confidence, and that’s far more compelling than any perfectly polished studio horror.
If you like your horror with a side of rebellion, your vampires woke and your humor pitch black, Bit is the midnight snack you didn’t know you needed.
Rating: 4 out of 5 beating vampire hearts.
Because when life gives you toxic masculinity, you bite it — and share the leftovers with your coven.
