Bats: Human Harvest

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

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!

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.

It's called "Bats: Human Harvest", I'm pretty sure I can end the review there. You know it's going to be good for some marginal entertainment, you know it's going to be bad in any other field you can think of. What's up with the special effects in this one? CGI always looks laughable in low-budget movies but Jesus, this is just insane. The acting is universally terrible, but the Scottish chick who tries and completely fails to do a Russian accent ought to receive special mention. The weirdest thing about that though: this movie was shot in the former Soviet state of Bulgaria! How hard is it to find someone with a genuine Russian accent there? The logics behind a B-movie production, I guess I'll never get it. The comic relief scenes look like they've been written by Germans or something, most awful lines ever. Check out the hilarious interplay between the first victims, move over Laurel and Hardy. When a bunch of corpses are found in the forest, one guy reacts: "Who did this? Stalin's ghost?". Even Ed Wood would throw that in his wastebasket. The movie's filled with action though, it's not a total bore. If you can get over the fact that it sucks, you might even have fun with it.

Bats: Human Harvest is not a good or great movie, but I can think of far worse ways to waste my time. I did like the setting, not quite exotic but atmospheric enough, the photography is not too slipshod and the editing and music were decent. The effects and acting were uneven but by no means across-the-board-distractingly-bad. Some of the effects do look artificial, but the bats are ferocious enough. In terms of acting, there are some who do put effort into their roles, but also others who look as though they are just reading lines. The real problems though were with the characters, story and especially the script. The characters are stereotypical with not much development going on. The story is not exactly dull, but it is never exactly exciting either, and holds few surprises too. The script is the worst offender, often cheesy and stilted than not. All in all, one of the movies that falls into the some good/some bad category. 5/10 Bethany Cox