Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Fantastic!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

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.

Almost ten years old and I never took the time to watch this movie, why, because everybody said that it was bad. But there comes a time when you can find those movies in the sell out section of your local DVD shop. So it happened, although it was the extra beyond limits low budget section. I picked it up and plugged it in. Starts of pretty well I thought with the killing of a young couple. But then the movie declines in a real bad movie. The lead actors are surely doing this to cash in, Lou Diamond Philips was once on top of the list with movies like La Bamba and Young Guns. Here he delivers bad acting. For Dina Meyer we could tell the same. They are both never believable. And the real actors are the bats themselves. We have seen this kind of story a thousand times. Especially in the fifties there were those creature features. Now and then they make a new creature movie like Host and that kind of movies really have a storyline. There is never any suspense in this flick. No blood, no nudity no gore. When the bats attack you will never be frightened, the bats themselves look like Disneybats so you could guess how bat, euh, bad they are. When the town is attacked it made me think of The Birds and the link with the posters "Nosferatu" at the cinema are ridiculous too. They bring in the army, and they couldn't destroy the bats, come on. As this is a real Hollywood product with wellknown actors I just gave it a 2 out of ten. The editing is boring, score is terrible, anyway, it just got a two because at the end of the movie you really got frightened, a bat arises from the earth, frightened that they would make Bats 2, but it is destroyed in a funny way. Avoid it at all costs.

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