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Mulberry Street (2006)
As one of the 2007 After Dark HorrorFest 8 Films to Die for we now have "Mulberry Street" on DVD. One of the most talked about out of the 8 movies "Mulberry Street" examines post 9/11 New York City as an epidemic breaks out in the city turning people into half man half rats. I would have to say that at the time of the After Dark HorrorFest that this movie was the one with the most positive buzz and was actually one of the movies that I wanted to see during the festival. Although I never got to see it since the schedule of the screenings didn't work with my schedule I wasn't able to make it to the theater to see it. But now it's arrived on DVD along with the 7 other titles in the film festival and horror fans get to see what they missed if they didn't make it to theaters to see them.
"Mulberry Street" is the story of a infection that's breaking out in Manhattan that's turning humans into flesh eating rat creatures. At the same time there is a small group of tenants in an apartment building trying to hold up in their building as the disease is spreading all around them. Will they be able to figure out what is going on in time to stop it or will they manage to become like a major part of the city and be turned into rat food for the newly found monsters?
Going into "Mulberry Street" I have to say that I was actually looking forward to watching this one, but man was I disappointed with the final results. Overall the movie was less than impressive to me, especially because I had no idea that the movie was going with the annoying habit of shaking the living hell out of the camera anytime there was an attack by one of the rat creatures. Now I know that this seems to be the standard in modern horror films but this one used it to the point of ridiculousness. There were times in the movie where I was trying to figure out if certain characters had turned into the creatures and seriously couldn't tell because of all of the shaky camera action used. I could say the same thing for a lot of the scenes in the movie that would have contained a lot of gore too. I mean you see some red stuff in this one but there is very little good gore on screen as it's just completely killed with shaky camera bullshit.
The characters in the movie are alright, but they aren't anything to write home about either. There was very little character development in the movie and I personally thought that suffered in the movie for a couple of reasons. First off the running time of the movie is only about 84 minutes or so, which isn't enough time to build characters when you have everything else going on in the movie. Secondly, if this movie was just played up to be campy and silly it most likely would have been better. The fact that they are trying to play everything seriously just hurts because they their time effectively enough to convince me that this is a serious situation. I understood where the movie was coming from but a lot of it just felt hollow to me.
The plot of the movie is also super thin with the only points seriously being the fact that rats are attacking people and waiting to see if Clutch's (played by Nick Damici) daughter can make it home as she was coming home from the military when all hell was breaking loose. But other than that there really isn't anything noteworthy and to me it simply hurt the movie. That's why I said that if they were trying to be campy about it the plot would be a lot less important and it would have helped the end result of the movie in my opinion.
I will give director Jim Mickle some credit here however because this one was apparently made on a pretty low budget, but that aside this one really isn't anything that special. It has moments and although there were times where I was enjoying the movie I found myself struggling to get through the end of the film and it's only an 84 minute film in the first place. I'm sure this one will have an audience out there, but unfortunately I'm not in that audience at all and I can't really recommend this one either. Avoid.
Rating - **
-Ed Demko
