Bats: The Awakening

I agree with the other reviews about the shortcomings of this tepid little outing. But I had to add that ALL of these actors appear to be British and are speaking with an American accent that they cannot account for. The location is clearly a older country house in the U. K. Was this done under the misguided idea that it would make the film have wider appeal?

Right, well the track record of creature features with bats haven't really been the most successful, famous or entertaining. Yet, there is something alluring to me with these creature feature movies, so of course I sat down to watch the 2021 movie "Bats: The Awakening" from writer Scott Jeffrey.

But wow, this movie was just altogether bad. The storyline was rather simplistic, to the point where I was starting to wonder if writer Scott Jeffrey actually had written anything, or if it was just left up to directors Scott Jeffrey and Rebecca Matthews to make things up as they went along.

The acting in the movie was adequate enough. Nothing outstanding, mind you. But the actors and actresses were doing okay enough jobs with their given roles and characters, taking into consideration the lack of a well-written script and storyline.

Then there was the bat creature. Well, no, just no. It didn't work on any level. It was so painstakingly clear that it was just a guy in a hairy costume, wearing oversized latex hands and a dubious latex mask with really poor quality fake fangs glued on to it. I was baffled by the sheer level of crappy craftsmanship that had gone into constructing that costume. It was such an eyesore, and it made it utterly impossible to take that creature seriously as a dangerous creature of the night.

You might want to do yourself a favor and stay well clear of the 2021 movie "Bats: The Awakening" and instead opt to sit down to watch the likes of the 1999 movie "Bats" or the 2005 movie "Vampire Bats".

My rating of the 2021 movie "Bats: The Awakening" lands on a mere two out of ten stars. This was definitely not an outstanding creature feature, nor an impressive addition to the horror genre.

Once the family of talentless acting ability took over the story it was pretty much all downhill from there. The attempts at fake crying I'm sure was enough to make most people cringe and stop the movie (if they even made it that far). However, onward I tread so I could write this review.

This is not a remake or sequel to the movie BATS (1999, starring Lou Diamond Phillips) as I had originally thought based on the title alone. In fact, this movie isn't really even about bats at all. So if you're looking for a movie about bats, then you may wanna skip this one. This one is closer to the 1974 film THE BAT PEOPLE. As bad as that movie is, it's still better than this one. So again, if you're looking for a movie about bats, then you'd be much better off watching literally any other movie that's actually about bats, such as the aforementioned BATS (1999), it's 2007 sequel BATS: HUMAN HARVEST, genetically altered bats in FANGS (2002), the TV movie VAMPIRE BATS (2005), or the 1979 classic, NIGHTWING. I've also recently read about another movie, THE SILENCE (2019), which may be worth a look as well, though I have yet to view it.

Others have complained about the poor quality of the creature effects, whereas I didn't really mind them all that much, but it is true, the special effects aren't really that special. I have seen worse though (Danzig's Verotika quickly comes to mind). But, I am an avid horror fan and have sat through some of the absolute worst b-horror dreck in existence. While I wouldn't lump this into the "Worst Movie Ever" category, it does rank towards the bottom of the barrel regardless. I did enjoy the score throughout most of the running time though. So there's that.

Straight dog water. Literally makes no sense. Save yourself and don't watch this. I could write so much more but it's not worth the effort.

Bad.....the writing, directing, acting, lighting, location, editing. The saving grace....the sound engineer did a reasonable effort. Don't be fooled by the description, it hardly fits.