I think the Oscar race just got a little tighter when Bats was released into the market. This is clearly one of the best films that has come out this year. You can forget about the cynicism of American Beauty, the brilliance of Fight Club, the ingenuity of Three Kings and the mania that is Sixth Sense, Bats is set to go down as one of the greats up there with Jaws, Patton, Rocky, Annie Hall and Amadeus. I think future generations of Hollywood directors and writers are going to turn to BATS to see how it is done. John Carpenter's Halloween and Spielberg's Jaws used to be the bench mark when it came to horror, but this has put a whole new perspective into how to scare someone at the theater. When I left the theater my knuckles were a ghostly white from gripping the arm rests and when I looked on the ghastly faces of the hundreds of people leaving the theater, they all had the same expression. They were frightened. The show ended at about midnight and we were all anxious to get into our cars because we were afraid those cunning bats were waiting to get us, right outside the theater. Now that is good film making. Jaws made me afraid of the ocean, I think Bats is going to make me afraid of the night sky. I have never seen bats that look this real in a movie. Those fangs were so real looking that most of the budget must have gone into the production of those intricately designed bats. Fangs, eyes, and even their hissing sounds were realistic. What a fantastic film. If this isn't nominated at Oscar time for best picture and director, then I would say that something is up with the academy. I am still in awe and utter fear as I sit here and write this review of Bats. This is one of the scariest films that I have ever seen. WOW!!!
Okay, I just had to do it. I had to.
Bats is really one of the worst films to come out this year. But this is a film that is so easy to rip on that I thought it would be fun to do the exact opposite and just confuse the hell out of the readers for a minute or so. The only award this may be winning this year is the Raspberry awards. But you know what? Going into this film, I was expecting a really, really, really bad film. I only got a bad one, so that was unexpected and a nice surprise. I think I, like most other horror movie nuts enjoy a good "bad" horror flick at times. There is just something about cheese that is fun at times. And for that reason, Bats delivers. Everything you have heard about the film is true. It is all bad. The bats are laughable, the story is a joke and the writing is awful, even the commercials looked pretty bad. But there is one good thing going for it, and that is that it had a subtle homage to Jaws in it. The guy that first gets killed at the beginning is named "Quint" and when they do an autopsy on him, it wreaked of Hoopers little angry deposition in Jaws when he tells them that it wasn't a boating accident. And if you can pick up on little subtleties like that then the film is more fun. Really, this isn't all that bad, I mean it is bad, but there are really worse out there. Have you ever seen Truth Or Dare? I mean the movie where mental patients get a hold of a grenade and blow their own heads off? Well that is really bad, I mean really, really bad. And as I said, this is just bad. But I saw it in an empty theater during the day. Seriously, there was just me and a friend. And at AMC in Toronto, they have retractable arm rests so that you can put them back and use the seats as a couch, which is what we did. It was very comfortable and we enjoyed the movie quite a bit more that way.
Bats will probably be gone by the time this review gets to IMDb so you may not have a chance to see it at the theater, but if you are in a campy horror movie mood, then rent this when it comes out on video. You may enjoy it. I hope you didn't take my accolades too seriously at the beginning of the film, it was all in good fun. And remember, sometimes bad movies can be fun to see. You don't have to think, you don't really have to feel either. And you get to laugh at stupid people doing stupid things. Bats is a great example of that. If Bats is even ever mentioned in the same sentence as American Beauty come Oscar time, there will be a federal inquiry and Mr. Logan and the backers of this movie may go to a maximum state prison and his punishment would be to watch this movie every day of his sentence. Now that would be funny.
