Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

DubyaHan The movie is wildly uneven but lively and timely - in its own surreal way

Michelle Ridley The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Scott LeBrun After revisiting this 1990s update of the classic "nature strikes back" genre of the 1970s, this viewer can say that he has warmed up to it a bit. It's of absolutely no real distinction, but adequate directing and acceptable acting manage to overcome a VERY routine script. An unending multitude of killer bats (that have been genetically engineered, naturally) are unleashed on a sleepy Texas burg. Among our heroes are a laid back sheriff (Lou Diamond Phillips), a bat expert (Dina Meyer), and her assistant (Leon).The script by John Logan is stupid and clichéd, and unfortunately treats the assistant character as a comedy relief stereotype. It's also kind of hard to feel sorry for the many townspeople in the movies' big set piece when they prove too dumb to get the Hell out of Dodge. The execution does manage to make this reasonably entertaining, with a fair bit of intense action and some moderate suspense. The effects, unfortunately, are mostly pretty poor. The puppets are not the best work that KNB has ever done, and the digital FX are purely laughable. At the very least, there's some pleasing widescreen photography and scenic locations. Some horror fans may also be pleased with the fairly high body count.Phillips is likable in the hero role; he's at least more convincing here as a cop than he was in "The First Power". The real standout is the lovely Meyer: not only is she excellent eye candy, but her character is very smart, very strong, and very capable. Leon is wasted in his role. That brings us to the matter of Bob Gunton, a superb veteran character actor who has one of the most embarrassing roles of his career. Cast as the requisite mad scientist, you'll likely be left shaking your head at the flimsiness of his motivation.NOT an altogether bad movie, but also far from being a good one. Fortunately, it's relatively short.Five out of 10.

PartialMovieViewer This movie is a wonderful specimen of near perfect cinematographic work. When looking up the word 'art', 'Bats' should be at the top of your list. This flick stands alone as unquestionable proof that acting is unnecessary to create celluloid magic. Each veteran star embraces their individual characterizations unprofessionally and with the puerility of a neophyte. The lack of script and direction dramatically adds to the aforementioned unimaginative schema, creating a meretricious masterpiece equally appreciated by both the comatose and fatuous. This inanimate roller coaster of a movie has little action or suspense. Sadly these qualities are devoured by the grating ennui. If one enjoys reasons to take naps, 'Bats' is for you. It is also well worth the time it takes to gouge one's eyes out or perform other self-mutilations – but that is not my cup of tea. If you recommend this to a friend and they will hate you.

Toronto85 An expert named Dr. Sheila Casper is brought in when "Bats" begin killing animals and people in a small town in Texas. Some bodies are first found all chewed up, and we discover the killers are large bats who have been injected with something thanks to a mad scientist Dr. Alexander McCabe. Those bats attack and infect a large number of other normal bats, and that's when it becomes feeding time. Whatever the scientist did to the bats he was testing gives them the ability to sense things that normal bats wouldn't, and also gives them the thirst for human blood. We see the bats attack our main group of characters, as well as the entire town until Sheila realizes the only way to stop them for good is to freeze them. Will this attempt to end their reign of terror work, or will the mutated bats live on and kill everyone in sight?'Bats' is pretty much an average "animal/mammal attacks" type of horror movie. It really gave nothing too special other than a few moments. Those moments which work are the scenes in the small town when the bats attack the townsfolk. We get nice location shots of them attacking a bar, a grocery store, the outside of a movie theatre, etc. That was really well done. Where the movie fails is it's ending portion. It drags on way too much in which the experts and Sheriff Emmett Kimsey tries to kill them. Plus an added plot point of making it that the government was creating killer bats as weapons in war or something fell flat. I don't know, I thought it was really silly.Acting was pretty good I thought. Lou Diamond Phillips as the Sheriff and Dina Meyer as the expert did a good job. The stand-out performance goes to Leon as funny guy Jimmy, he had some funny one-liners and delivered them perfectly. I'd recommend 'Bats' if you like these kinds of horror films where animals or birds attack. It wasn't bad, but could've been better.5/10

disdressed12 this is a strange little movie.i mean it's very low budget and mostly poorly acted,perhaps on purpose.i'd swear it was done tongue in cheek yet at the same time it seems to take itself seriously.it has some pretty cringe worthy dialogue to say the least,and the story is quite silly,in my mind.at the same time though,it is fairly fun,and some of the characters are interesting.it's no masterpiece.in fact far from it.but i did find it a passably entertaining diversion.if you keep you expectation level really low for this movie,you might get some enjoyment out of it.it wasted around 85 minutes or so(not counting the end credits.it's not memorable,and once it's over,you'll forget all about it.for me,Bats is a 4.5/10