Bats 2

It wasn't until I was doing the review I realised this was a TV Movie, Should have guessed, the effects are bad, acting is awful and the script is terrible. The original was a good 'b' movies, suggest you watch that instead.

After watching many horror films over the years, the idea of bats being the central feature of a film never really crossed my mind. Bats sometimes are in the background but not the stars of the show. These little mammals are obviously small and maybe a little creepy but unless you get very close, I just don't find them very scary.

That said in 1999 came the movie Bats which received negative reviews and has been long forgotten. Bats was only for die hard horror fans. Then close to ten years later in 2007 and really out of nowhere, came this sequel on the SyFy channel, Bats: Human Harvest.

The setting is supposed to be Afghanistan but unfortunately it looks nothing like Afghanistan. Here there is a Delta Force groups of soldiers trying to track down a terrorist who is a rogue American weapons researcher but along the way, they are attacked by genetically-altered killer bats.

Looking at this, the main reason this film fails is because of the bats. There are no close ups of the bats and they are very generic and boring. They just don't work as a villain or a source of danger. Being a SyFy film, there are many unknown actors who are shallow and really struggle at times. All in all, the horror aspects as well as the CGI here is just of very low quality.

One thing I was wondering is just what does this film want to be? It has horror aspects to it but it also contains a war story that is itself pretty shallow and wouldn't work on it's own as a war film. Frankly, I do not think war stories mesh well with horror ideas so this puzzle doesn't really fit even though it is original no doubt.

Bats: Human Harvest is frankly very low quality junk horror that is very hard to sit through and I couldn't wait until it was over. Frankly this series is useless and unnecessary.

Dull one-note characters with next to no development, unimpressive performances by people who sound like they're simply reading lines, and ludicrous special effects combine to make this a genuine stinker. The story begins with eminently bland commando Russo and his fellow soldiers attacking an Al-Qaeda training base. The scene tells us that Al-Qaeda has recently come to seek an ultimate weapon, and also serves to illustrate Russo's only character trait, a tendency to eschew teamwork. With the help of a collection of blank slates and walking stereotypes, including a Russian spy, Russo travels to Chechnyan territory to catch a mad scientist working for the terrorists. Along the way, they encounter vast hordes of flesh-eating bats that fly in broad daylight for some reason. From there, the movie becomes nothing more than a dragging morass of ridiculous action, including a scene in which a swarm of bats slices a soldier's arm off!

Killer Bats are attacking a group of military soldiers and CIA agents in Chechnya who are seeking out a rogue doctor responsible for the mutant creatures.

We meet a group of Delta Force soldiers who are paired up with a Russian CIA agent named Katya. They are in an Chechnya forest trying to seek out the evil Dr. Walsh who has gone rogue and is hiding dangerous American weapons. While they look for Walsh, they are attacked by genetically enhanced killer bats who seem to want to kill any human in sight. Can they find the doctor who is responsible for all of this? Or will his killer bats finish them off?

The first Bats movie was painfully average, but at least watchable. Bats: Human Harvest is such a dull and non entertaining movie from the Sci-Fi Channel which has put out some real sequel stinkers such as Anaconda 3 and 4. This movie completely ignores the original movie making it a sequel in name only. The acting is terrible with not one redeemable actor or character to be found, just a lot of really bad fake Russian accents by a few of them.

The military theme and storyline in this is extremely dull and didn't need to be a thing when you have a movie about killer Bats. It almost takes away from any tension that could be found from average folks in a small town that aren't trained or equipped to kill. With the military as our main characters, it's just a lot of shooting from people that all act and look alike and that we don't care about.

I give Bats 2 only two stars for it's budget that was able to afford some quality shooting scenes and decent gore from the bat attacks. But overall this sequel is a dud. The biggest problem is that it failed to grab my attention like the first one did. There are no characters developed enough to care for, so all we are left with are CGI bats flying around killing random people. Not entertaining at all.

2/10

Well, if you are looking for an interesting creature feature, then the 2007 movie titled "Bats: Human Harvest" is not one I would or could recommend that you sit down to watch.

This movie was fairly pointless and lacked a properly interesting storyline. Sure, it was straight forward and easy to follow, but it was just a very boring and generic storyline that offered nothing much of any interest throughout the course of the entire movie. In fact, it did feel sort of unnecessary, as the 1999 movie "Bats" fairly much did everything better than this 2007 movie.

I am sure that writers Chris Denk and Brett Merryman came up with something that seemed good on paper. But it just translated poorly onto the screen. And I can't say that director Jamie Dixon landed a homerun with this movie.

The CGI animated bats were sort of terrible to look at. They definitely had the shape right, but it was just poor CGI. And the poor CGI failed to deliver something believable, which is crucial for a creature feature.

The acting in the movie was, well, let's just say that with a script and storyline as they had to work with in "Bats: Human Harvest", then they delivered adequately enough. Mind you, you will not be blown away by any award-winning performances.

"Bats: Human Harvest" was a boring movie, yet I managed to sit through it. Sure, I started to do something else whilst watching it, but I got through it. This movie failed to impress or properly entertain me.

I am rating "Bats: Human Harvest" a generous two out of ten stars. While I got through the entire movie, this is by no means a movie I will ever return to watch a second time.