SXSW 2025 Review: THE TRUE BEAUTY OF BEING BITTEN BY A TICK, Sinister Chill Vibes All Around
Yvonne (Zoë Chao) needs to get out of the city and she needs to do it fast. A tragic accident has brought down on her the kind of crushing trauma response that can only be resolved by removing herself from her situation. Thankfully, her good friend Camille (Callie Hernandez) has a place in the country where she can go to rest and recuperate. However, when Yvonne arrives, she discovers that Camille is also housing two new friends, real estate agent Isaac (Jeremy O. Harris) and his boyfriend A.J. (James Cusati-Moyer). Uncomfortable with the situation, but in desperate need of a break, Yvonne sticks around, and before long, things get very strange.
Camille and her buddies have given themselves over to a super hippie-dippy lifestyle, living off the land, gently floating from one day to the next in this idyllic rural setting without a care in the world. Camille isn’t really buying it, but as the days and nights filled with casual, consequence free music and games wear on, she begins to settle it, until an unexpected tick bite changes everything.
The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick marks director Peter Ohs’ successful return to SXSW Film & TV Festival after making a splash with 2022’s Visions selection, the micro budget supernatural story, Jethica. Featuring writing credits from Ohs and all four actors, this is a collaborative effort and exploration of the cult of wellness that seems to be one of social media’s latest and most insidious trend factories.
Chao’s Yvonne enters a world of gentle calming vibes that feel too good to be true, a kind of sinister ASMR IRL version of reality that can only be hiding something, but she isn’t quite sure what. A tick bite, especially in a relatively untamed woodland, should be cause for alarm, but her housemates seem unconcerned, and even excited about this development, despite Yvonne’s healthy and reasonable fear of its potential ramifications.
For those who haven’t experienced any of Ohs’ work, it definitely has a very specific aesthetic that it can take a little bit of getting used to. The calming, weightless vibes that Camille and her friends impose upon Yvonne are projected to the audience in an endless sea of neutral tones and very-low-talking that can either put a person completely or at ease or drive them up a wall – I generally belong to the latter group – it’s an incredibly effective way of putting the audience into Camille’s shoes. It’s almost like a wellness culty Texas Chain Saw house, once Yvonne is there, she’s cannot leave, but she knows something terrible is happening, she just can’t put her finger on it.
As the film progresses and Camille, Isaac, and A.J.’s true intentions become more evident, the film evolves into something more genre focused, revealing truths about Yvonne’s situation that she could have ever uncovered on her own. It’s terrifying, especially for those of us to whom “wellness” as a culture is a four-letter-word, and Ohs’ and his cast demonstrate an insidious calm that can only be malevolent.
Ohs’ has carved out a unique niche for this kind of low budget, high concept, low key genre adjacent work that examines modern anxieties and fears in a way that speaks to a generation raised on social media and the ever-present need be on display. The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick takes that anxiety of keeping up with the Joneses’ and the fear of failing to live one’s best life to an absurd end that can best be described as deliciously ludicrous. Viewer’s reactions will vary widely based on their levels of tolerance or excitement for Ohs’ ominously chill aura, but those who get it will really get it.
