Bats: The Awakening

You want to know why you've never heard of this film? Most likely because anyone ever associated with this film never worked again and expunged it from their resume. The title mix-up doesn't help either (is it Bats or is it Bats: The Awakening, does anyone care?). This film makes the Lou Diamond Phillips Bats movie look like an award winning film.

The acting in this film may be the worst I have ever seen and I've seen some stinkers. I love B films usually! The lead girl in this brings to mind Jessica Caufiel from Urban Legends: The Final Cut. She plays an actress playing a terrible actress and she screams so ridiculously. The actress from this Bats movie is like that but she's not pretending to be bad, she's just bad! And she screams through her nose or something. Just awful.

And don't get me started on the 'monster' (guy in a big bat suit). Just, wow! Or the lack of script and storyline.

One star for making me laugh at loud when the bat screeches and the guy's head splits open like a cuckoo clock. I mean, what was that?!

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.

I understand that in a zero to ten rating system that minus numbers are not possible, but if I could I would give this movie a -3.75. It's not a full minus 4 movie, but almost as bad as that. The acting is pretty bad and the directing is just as bad. It's just not a good movie. But I bet they had fun making it. Good luck next time.

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?

With every scene nearing its end one just hopes that the bat arrives, but sadly it doesn't. Now that's the spell binding part in this movie and collectively this this movie can be called a spell binder. And finally the bat arrives and you suddenly lose base with the reality with what real bat looks like. And that's what I call it nerve wrecking!