The Roost

I am a sucker for zombies, but this one definitely needed more.

The whole film took place on a deserted road and in a barn. A roost of bats turned people into zombies. That's it. No explanations. Just people getting turned into zombies.

This could have been a 10 minute YouTube video and it might have been interesting, but stretched to 80 minutes, it just didn't have anything to recommend it.

The music was good, and it did have a creepy atmosphere, but like most low budget productions, the lighting was terrible.

Try something else.

I recently watched the Ti West throwback The Roost (2005) on Tubi. The film is framed as a late-night fright show and tells the story of a group of friends on their way to a wedding who end up at an abandoned farm-on the wrong night.

As previously mentioned, this picture is written and directed by Ti West (Pearl) and features Tom Noonan (RoboCop 2), Karl Jacob (Catfight), Wil Horneff (The Sandlot), and Larry Fessenden (You're Next).

It's clear this movie was made by someone who truly loves the horror genre. Tom Noonan is perfectly cast as the eerie horror host, and he brings a lot of fun to the role. The main storyline is fairly straightforward and nothing groundbreaking, but West makes the most of his limited budget. The makeup, costumes, and practical effects are solid-the infected look cool, and the corpses are impressively done. The bats are just okay, but they're easy to overlook. At just over 80 minutes, the runtime also feels just right.

In conclusion, The Roost is a fairly average entry in the horror genre, but you can spot early flashes of Ti West's emerging talent. I'd give this a 5/10 and recommend it to horror enthusiasts looking for something atmospheric and independently made.

Noonan is talented - check out his triple duty as the writer, director and star of 1994's WHAT HAPPENED WAS..., which features one of the most believable first kisses in movie history - so what in the world is he doing here? Either lending his star power to a needy friend, I suppose, or simply taking the money and running.

THE ROOST has absolutely nothing to recommend it. The writing, directing, acting, photography, effects, makeup and scares - they're all garbage. Even Noonan's own bit as the retro TV horror host is painfully lame, and the "shock" scenes are just a handful of uninspired shaky-cam attacks by some escapees from a WALKING DEAD convention.

You can - as I did - fast-forward through 90% of this sad excuse for a movie without missing anything, and the other 10% is equally worthy of oblivion.

And, please, can people stop hating on bats? The bat is a docile and remarkable creature without which we'd be up to our eyeballs in mosquitoes, and the vandalism of its habitats is an ignorant crime against nature.

I really wanted to love this moody and minimalist zombified-by-bat-bites flick, but it was unbelievably slow-paced. It has a brooding and creepy atmosphere, but nothing occurs in the first 40 minutes except bickering amongst young folk. I appreciated that the main story went for horror and not comedy, unlike most contemporary zombie features, but that goes out the window with the fact that the movie is introduced (and interrupted) by some silly fake TV horror host. That part of the film comes across as filler, which is unfortunate in a film that already moves way to slow and has a lack of action, dialogue, etc. If 30 minutes were edited, this could make a sweet short film or TV episode.

"The Roost" is a movie that was most assuredly made by lovers of "B" movies for lovers of "B" movies. Nothing more, Nothing less. And as a lover of this particular type of film I was stoked to see it. I have to admit though...It was a while before I could get into the movie. It starts out slooowly, With a intro/outro featuring a horror host that I found to be fairly interminable. As a matter of fact I didn't know what was going on for more than a few minutes of the film. Once the feature actually started I managed to get a hold of the concept & enjoy the film a little bit more. A lot of the film is grainy & dark. Not a good combo if you ask me but it 's not enough to hinder watching the film on your TV. It must have been rough to watch on a big screen though. The plot? Well let's just say that 4 People are stranded on an old country road in the middle of the night & seek shelter/help at an barn that they stumble upon. Unfortunately for them the barn is infested with killer bats that have the ability to turn you into a zombie if you are bitten by them. WTF? Yeah, It's a bit odd. As a matter of fact it doesn't make any sense at all. But I don't think they were looking to make a logical movie when they were filming this. Just a movie that makes you jump a few times & cover your eyes a bit. And in that sense they succeeded.....Barely. It's got plenty of atmosphere & the performances were pretty tight(When you can hear them, The sound is fairly bad. Subtitles help a lot). The ending was also pretty eerie. All in all a pretty good little movie to get you through a dark & stormy night with your significant other. And I believe that's what the filmmakers set out to do. They succeeded.