Rating:
The Info:
Directed by: Louis Morneau
Written by: John Logan
Starring: Lou Diamond Phillips, Dina Meyer,
Leon
Produced by: Bradley Jenkel, Louise Rosner,
Brent Baum, John Logan, Dale Pollock, Steven Stabler
The Nutshell
Mutated bats escape from a lab and proceed to wreak havoc on a small Texas town.
The Review
Caution: The following review is geared towards people who enjoy cheesy films. If you want to see Bats because you want to be scared, forget it right now. Go see Stir Of Echoes or The Sixth Sense instead. For no serious horror fan will enjoy this film; it is the cheesiest film of the year, topping even Lake Placid. You've been warned.
Bats' plot can be summarized in a single line: mutated bats escape from a lab and five people must band together to stop them before they kill again. That's it. No sub-plots (not even a pointless romance, which was a pleasant surprise), no character development, no trick ending. Mutated bats escape from a lab and five people must band together to stop them before they kill again. I only repeat that because with so little depth to the film's story, this review is going to be painfully short.
The five people in question are bat expert Sheila Casper (Meyer), her assistant Jimmy (Leon), Emmitt Kimsey (Phillips), the sheriff of Gallup, Texas where the action takes place, Hodge, from the Center For Disease Control, and Dr. McCabe, who created the mutated bats. The five are caricatures of characters from every horror film past. The bad scientist isn't just evil, he is insane. The "world's biggest authority on bats" (they use the official term for a bat expert in the film but I couldn't understand it) is a 20-something, beautiful woman. Her sidekick is a wisecracking black man. And the town sheriff is a hard-headed cigar-chomper. Any of these ring a bell? The rest of the cast consists of several dozen hicks running around shooting at, or being killed by bats. Thousands of bats. Gross bats. But unfortunately, fake bats.
The special effects team of Rick Bongiovanni and Robert Carol Powers, working with director Louis Morneau, create stunning swarms of bats... but only when they are far up in the night sky. When the bats start to land at people's feet, or crawl around on the floor (yes they actually walk around a bit) they look like outcasts from some Gremlins sequel. In fact, at one point I heard the man next to me ask his girlfriend if she had the feeling that the bats were going to break into a song and dance number, they were that silly. When these bats attack, the supposed horror is a blur of confusing slashes of colour. No one could possibly be scared by it because no one can really tell what is going on. Picture the Tazmanian Devil spinning onto someone and flattening them and you'll get the picture.
The person that keeps Bats from being a total waste of time is Leon. As Jimmy, his stereotypically Black sidekick character, he gets to be a total wise-ass. The one-liners are often so poorly written it's painful, but if you have gone into Bats expecting cheese, you will lap it up. Lines like "Houston, we gots a problem" and "If one of your mutated freaks even thinks about looking at me, and I mean, if it even starts to roll its eyes at me... I'm comin' for you" (said to the bad scientist). Other minor chuckles come from random cheesy bits like a theatre showing Nosferatu, and a three-feet deep lake of bat poop. Any Lou Diamond Phillips fans thinking that this could be his big break into superstardom should think twice. His acting, like that of Dina Meyer and the other actors is basic and two-dimensional. The actors seem well aware of the quality of film they are making, and go for the cheese in every scene.
So ask yourself: do I like cheesy horror films? If the answer is anything but "Gawd yes!" go see something else. For the rest of you die-hards, go see Bats. It is everything you are hoping for and more.
Copyright - Tim Chandler
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