Bats (1999)

Best movie of this year hands down!

You won't be disappointed!

Don't Believe the Hype

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Hearing of a series of bat attacks, a scientist and her helper arrive in a small Texas town to deal with the creatures only to learn they're genetically modified killing machines and must find a way of dealing with the creatures once and for all before they escape.There are some pretty good points in this one. What's really enjoyable about this one a lot of great moments is the high-amount of action scenes within this one with a really fast and quite watchable pace to it. The opening attack, where the bats appear to attack the couple in the truck makes for a strong opening while a follow-up encounter where the bats swarm over a truck containing several characters when a second one comes up and they suddenly become aware of the new vehicle and come to an abrupt stop, then turn their heads towards the car so that their eyes light up a malevolent yellow which is one of the best shots. The main sequence in the middle of the movie where a large swarm of bats attacks the middle of town, causing general panic and mayhem also this helps out as the large amount of action including causing cars crashing into electrical poles, gets in tons of small individual encounters of the population getting swarmed allowing for a lot of great action and gore while the fact that it plays out over a long period of time is quite nice. As well, there's the later attack on the school as there's some solid swarming and ambushes there which makes for a fun time, and the finale in the tunnel makes for some atmospheric times with some rather frantic and enjoyable times trying to get out before they wake up which is what's quite thrilling about the sequence while providing a lot of fun action-packed moments here. It's also a little refreshing to see everybody agreeing that the problem is bats right from the start rather than having the clichéd extended argument among people who had clear evidence that it was bats and someone like the chief cop constantly butt heads over what the culprit is until it had a physical attack done in front of everyone to convince them is a nice change of pace. The last plus here is that the bats are actually pretty good, and they're really believable by abandoning the CGI commonly used for these types of films since the puppets look pretty realistic, and their close-ups make them out to be pretty terrifying to a degree. This is a lot better than it's been made out to be although it does have some problems. The biggest one here is that there are several confusing shots in this. Every time there was some sort of dramatic bat attack, the camera would go off on some sort of hyped-up whirlwind of herky-jerky motion that keeps it from being scary as the attack scenes become moot because we don't even get to see what's going on in the scene the cuts are so quick. The film provides in spades, since you often can't tell what is happening on screen and making the technique even more obnoxious is that it's used pretty much throughout the entire film. The origin of the bats is also a little confusing. All we know is that bats are attacking while how they're attacking and what exactly is happening remains a mystery. These bring the film down slightly from what it could've been.Rated PG-13: Violence, Adult Language and photographic violence of animals.

I won't do a résumé of the plot, but I don't understand the awful reviews. The science is plausible enough (I have a degree and I've worked in science for twenty years), the special effects aren't fantastic, but work well enough (this is fiction after all?) Scary in parts and witty dialogue. The lead characters were all likable (bad guys excepted of course). This is a fairly routine creature feature in some respects, but more believable than most in as much as the characters are neither stupidly heroic nor embarrassingly cowardly, the response to the emergency by the public and the authorities is also quite realistic. The sudden appearance of such numbers of bats is a bit of a stretch and some of the claims made by Dr McCabe are a touch too much, but other than that and the ultimate cause of the bat problem everything else works OK, for me at least. Mostly though, I had fun watching the movie and didn't feel my intelligence was insulted.

Watched this simply out of curiosity and turned out to be really good.A bat research experiment goes haywire, producing killer bats that terrorize a town in Arizona, and it's upto a local sheriff,and 2 scientists to find and eliminate all of them before they can eliminate more human lives.Its a short film, but really well shot, with good cinematography, action and thrills from start to end. The special effects are not as good as they are nowadays but nevertheless quite realistic. There is also no vulgarity which makes it suited for kids too.I wish there was a sequel.

If i could give this movie a .5 I would. Im in 100% agree with the AWFUL category to which most reviews lean toward ... very very bad bad movie. There has never been a single movie in my life to which I've been able to actually say I did not like, perhaps hated, every single aspect of. Even for any other extremely horribly mind numbingly BAD movies... usually they at least have ONE good thing to say about them. The Postman for example... for it I could say, "Hey well the first half an hour is a pretty awesome flick!". Well so then Bats came along and took away X amount of time from my life to which I'll never get back and be horribly scared by for life.I was hoping ide enjoy the camp, as i often do... but no. Im usually very tolerant with movies as well and enjoy a wide range. This was just so damn bad.. oh god just saying "Bats" out loud or to type it makes me feel sick.This movie is just God Awful and hurts the brain. Never rent it, Never buy it and Never watch it simply because your obviously retarded friend suggests the idea. Run away if forced by someone and destroy it if given as a gift.There simply IS NO WAY and not enough space in the world to sit here and list / describe all the problems and questions this movie has and creates... this is why this review is simply over and over drilling into your brain how BLOODY BAD this movie is.Be aware. Stay Back. RUN AWAY.