Mulberry Street (2006)

Thanks for the memories!

Just perfect...

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Mulberry Street is your stock standard rat virus that turns people into bloodthirsty idiots movie. Movie starts off a little slow as it introduces the random assortment of characters whose lives are all intertwined by living in a crumbling old New York apartment building. The opening sequence has flashes of rats scampering through pipes, sewers and subways and then focusing their attention on the human world above.Through random news broadcasts we get the story of people on the subway getting bitten by rats and this leads to the shutdown of the subway system and then the gradual quarantine of manhattan. The first we see of the outcome of these infected rat bites is when the aforementioned apartment building super, finds what he thinks is a dead and almost dessicated rat that somehow springs back to life and still has enough strength to bite into his arm. A while later he finds himself growing extra hair and generally feeling uneasy as he starts to transition from poor excuse for a building super into an even poorer excuse for a rat-man. More news broadcasts tell us that the rat bites are spreading and the city hospitals etc are being overrun. Before too long, the city streets become a free-for-all as law and order starts to break down and rat infected people start to randomly attack people, first on the street and then by breaking into homes and anywhere where people are taking refuge. Initially the authorities downplay the increase in rat bites saying that hundreds of people are bitten by rats in New York every day, however they don't start to mutate and kill people. Most of the movie centers around the small apartment block and the survivors holed up in their rooms trying to stay quiet and alive and wait for the military to start operations to sweep the city and rescue them. These recently mutated people have excellent hearing and insatiable appetites and unlike other movies in this genre, they won't just eat humans, we also see cats and other pets being grabbed and killed as anything is considered as food. By the end heavily armed soldiers in biohazard suits storm the buildings one by one and kill anyone who's infected and take into isolation any survivor. From there the movie just ends once most of the main cast has been killed and only a couple of residents who made it to the roof of the building end up being saved. As mentioned, the movie is not without its flaws. Most of the action takes place at night and as this was done on a budget, the filming is of the shaky hand-held camera kind. While this isn't a found footage movie, it plays like it's being filmed in front of an on scene camera crew, with all the running, fighting and horror scenes ending up as a blurry mess of action and with all the darkness and shadows you're hard pressed to work out what exactly is going on. In addition there's no real indication of what started the whole rat plague and there is no ending and no outcome. We have no idea if New York is now a no-go hot zone or if the whole island will need to be fumigated once all humans have been removed as there is no reason to assume the plague will fix itself. There is some indication that the plague/virus may have been deliberately generated as the movie focuses on the fact that lower manhattan is due for redevelopment and the apartment building at the centre of this film has been acquired and all tenants were due to make their respective apartments available for rent re-evaluation, however if most people are dead or relocated out of fear of spreading the virus, then development can proceed unhindered. That's at least what I took from this, of course I could be wrong, and unless they come out with a sequel I'm sticking to it.

This movie was so good for the first 45 minutes, I almost wept when the second half went all to hell.Few movies capture the seedy underbelly of New York City in as raw a way. Parts of this movie look almost like they were filmed guerrilla- style. Indeed, in that respect, "Mulberry Street" hearkens back to the glorious '80s films of Frank Hennenlotter.Alas, this is no "Basket Case" or "Brain Damage." Because although director Jim Mickle imbues the film with the same gritty, neon-lit, back-alley feel characteristic of Hennenlotter, his failure is that while Hennenlotter expertly married the surrealism of real-life Manhattan with his bizarre stories and creations, this film, while showing that kind of promise early on, unfortunately has so little confidence in itself it devolves quickly and quite unfortunately into B-movie idiocy.The conceit is wonderful -- a new rat-borne disease is turning New Yorkers into flesh-eating zombies.Wouldn't a "28 Days Later" set in NYC and directed by Frank Hennenlotter be awesome? Keep hoping. Because although it looks like it's going that way for the first half, then the rat people show up.Yes, this rat-borne disease not only makes people zombies, it freakin' turns them into rat people.Ridiculous, pointy-eared, pointy-toothed rat people who squeak like rats and scurry about the floor on all fours.I wanted to weep, seriously weep, halfway through this movie, because when the first rat person showed up after 45 minutes of Hennenlotteresque gritty New York cinematography, interesting camera-work and real, untrained New Yorkers as actors, it felt like I'd found a real super-cool, smart, pretty and sassy girlfriend, and just learned too late she had the clap.Man this one looked like it was gonna be a real good one, too. What a disappointment.

I enjoyed this.The camera work and editing were excellent - didn't feel low budget - and the dialogue in the first half was pretty skillful, setting up plot and character at the same time without being obvious.It turns into a standard last-man-standing horror flick, and you end up wondering why some of the characters were there in the first place. They could have done more with the father-daughter-lover angle, maybe given a bit of moral structure where the daughter avenges the father's infidelity by killing the zombie lover.Anyway, I watched this straight after Will Smith's take on the Omega Man - I Am Legend. Mulberry St is a better film.

In Manhattan, in a dilapidated building on Mulberry Street, the super Ross (Tim House) has trouble to repair the decayed systems to improve the lives of the tenants. The former boxer Clutch (Nick Damici) is a leader in the building and is anxiously waiting for the return of his beloved daughter Casey (Kim Blair) from a hospital for veterans after serving overseas. He prepares a surprising homecoming party for Casey with his gay neighbor Coco (Ron Brice). Clutch feels an attraction for her neighbor, the single mother and waitress Kay (Bo Corre), and her teenager son Otto (Javier Picayo) respects him like a father. Clutch is also close to Frank (Larry Medish), who is very sick, and his friend Charlie (Larry Fleischman). Meanwhile there is a rat attack in a subway station, followed by two others in different stations, and forcing the Major to showdown the public transport system. Sooner the victims bitten by rats turn into flesh eater mutants, attacking the other human beings and there is an outbreak that puts Manhattan in quarantine. The inhabitants have to fight to survive the attack of the ratlike creatures and Clutch gives his best effort trying to protect Casey and his friends."Mulberry Street" is an effective low-budget horror movie that really works. The characters are human, realistic and very well developed, creating an empathy with the viewer; the plot is simple but explains the origin of the outbreak; and the attack of the horde of mutants is gruesome and claustrophobic, recalling 1968 "Night of the Living Dead" and "REC". There is no final redemption in the non-commercial end, and for me it is another plus in this good film. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Infecção em Nova York" ("Infection in New York")