Simply A Masterpiece

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a very stupid movie. The plot is collegiate at best. The writing and acting follow suit. Since when do bats not fly at night? The whole movie is slow to develop, the acting sucks, there is no apparent rhyme of reason to the entire movie. Why does the guy that got attacked suddenly go after the girl? Who knows and I don't care. What happened to the two older people? Yeah you are suppose to assume the bats that stay home at night got them but there is no definitive answer. I know Chill has to show something but I wish they show good ones and not trash like this one. Alos where the hell do the outside, apparently flashing lights come from at times? Farms don't use flashing lights, at least in my experience. Kinda reminds of a poor mans sloppy Blair Witch.

I'm not sure why Ti West has so much hype associated with him, because he's really not that good. His movies have long, boring stretches of filler, where pretty much nothing happens. His writing is so minimalistic that it's difficult to say that his movies actually have any plot to speak of. In fact, the entirety of The Roost can be summed up with one sentence: Bats turn people into zombies. That's it. This can work (several of John Carpenter's movies are highly minimalist and feature only the most essential plot elements), but -- as this movie shows -- there's a very real danger that audiences will simply become bored and leave unfulfilled.If you're big into retro 1970s/1980s horror, full of atmosphere and tension, then you might appreciate this movie more than some other audiences. I like that style, but I still found this to be a bit underwhelming, for the most part. There were some parts that I liked, but, overall, I think the Ti West hype is mostly just overexcited, loud fanboys.

Okay little creeper using the "more is less" approach with quite a wacky premise..four young adults, on their way to a wedding taking a scenic route, meet a dangerous detour when they come across deadly bats(who have formed a colony within the barn of a nearby isolated farmhouse)which turn those they bite into zombies! Character actor Tom Noonan serves as a type of creature feature host for this flick, even interrupting at one point when he found the whimpering(..at the seemingly hopeless situation they face)of brother Elliot(Wil Horneff)and sister Allison(Vanessa Horneff, whose lip sticks out in a pout for most of the duration, as she complains, gripes, moans & groans about this and that..)grotesque. The first victims to encounter an unfortunate demise at the teeth of the bats were the elderly couple who live in the farmhouse and a policeman the group need assistance from in order to reach their car which was wrecked when a bat crashed into their windshield leaving the vehicle's axle locked on a big rock.The film is shot, on digital, entirely in the night which probably makes the bats more effective. I think those killer bats were mostly CGI, but the director has them flapping past the screen and at victims at such a frenzied state, one can barely tell. When you get a good look at the bats on top of a roof window, they aren't as effective..but as a collective swarming around their prey, I think the CGI isn't a detriment. The film really follows the characters as they try to remain out of the path of the bats, but when the zombies pop up out of nowhere that double threat really heightens the suspense. I like the disorienting violin strings as they get under the skin..this is what the director also uses to keep the viewer on edge. Not a bad way to waste about 75 minutes..looks like a little indie horror flick that might be featured within the "8 films to die for.." collection(whether or not that's a compliment or insult depends on the mixed response those film so often receive). The gore, if you're wondering, comes from the zombie flesh ripping and blood spatter.

I really wanted to love this moody and minimalist zombified-by-bat-bites flick, but it was unbelievably slow-paced. It has a brooding and creepy atmosphere, but nothing occurs in the first 40 minutes except bickering amongst young folk. I appreciated that the main story went for horror and not comedy, unlike most contemporary zombie features, but that goes out the window with the fact that the movie is introduced (and interrupted) by some silly fake TV horror host. That part of the film comes across as filler, which is unfortunate in a film that already moves way to slow and has a lack of action, dialogue, etc. If 30 minutes were edited, this could make a sweet short film or TV episode.