Best movie of this year hands down!

Such a frustrating disappointment

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Bats (1999): Dir: Louis Morneau / Cast: Lou Diamond Phillips, Dina Meyer, Bob Gunton, Leon, Carlos Jacott: It is weird looking at the advertising poster where the title is upside down spelling "stab." Was this intentional or just an error by someone who flunked their eye examination? The first problem is that unless we are dealing with vampire bats then the title fails to give off any form of scary intimidation as say Anaconda where the thought of the animal is far more intimidating. Then we have a host of airheads that do nothing to render this scary. There is a meathead scientist who experiments with nature by creating a nasty breed of bat thus letting them loose to attack everything that moves. A bat expert is summoned to assist the local Sheriff. This leads to a rather cruel and disgusting climax. Director Louis Morneau does his best but the scientist featured here is a real joke. Bob Gunton plays the biggest idiot in the history of horror films. He out stretches his arms claiming to control the critters only to be slaughtered by a flock of them. Was he drunk or just on a serious amount of cocaine? Lou Diamond Phillips and Dina Meyer play characters of moron capacity, but Gunton's role takes the cake as the biggest bat sh*t piece of writing in this garbage. There are good shots of overhead flight but the film is pointless and should be buried in bat guano. Score: 2 / 10

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.

Bats is a very generic late-'90s killer animal flick that follows most of the genre rules to the letter. All of the expected characters are present and correct—untrustworthy government scientist, brave local sheriff, doomed-to-die deputy, dedicated (and sexy) animal expert, wise-cracking sidekick—and the plot develops in an extremely predictable manner, opening with young couple alone in the dark falling victim to the bats, before introducing a whole townful of potential victims, and climaxing with our brave heroes risking their lives in a showdown against the deadly critters.It all gets very silly at times, with perhaps the most unbelievable scene being the securing and electrification of a whole school by just four people in the space of a few hours, but it still proves to be quite a bit of fun, director Louis Morneau keeping the action moving at such a swift pace that such nonsense is fairly easy to forgive (unlike the director's tendency to 'skew', stretch and blur the image during the frenzied bat attacks, which I found bloody irritating).What really helps to elevate this formulaic nonsense to slightly-above-average are the solid cast and some fairly decent special effects. Dina Meyer (of Starship Troopers fame) and Lou Diamond Phillips make for a likable protagonists, and Leon is far less objectionable as 'token comedy relief black guy' than one might expect. As for the bats, they're a mixture of more than reasonable CGI and nifty puppetry from KNB; my only gripe, FX-wise, is a lack of splatter—a bit more gore would have been very welcome.

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