Vampire Bats, a made for television Lucy Lawless horror movie, is quite a passable time waster. Interesting enough but you might struggle to recall much of it a day or two later.
Nightwing, Bats, Bats: Human Harvest, The Bat People - has there ever been a truly good movie about bats? Don't dare suggest Chosen Survivors as being an OK bat movie. It's only OK by comparison. Vampire Bats is better than some others but as we have acknowledged, the bar is not set too high.
Director Eric Bross has his cast well in hand and keeps the action ticking over. Production values are at the better end of the 'made for television' spectrum. Lucy Lawless is easily up to the job.
The plot is just a little cliched even down to the environmentally irresponsible local official but there are enough twists to maintain interest. Without giving too much away, a scientist, Lawless, gets caught up in the investigation of several unexplained deaths in which some of her students are implicated. She does add up two and two pretty quickly but as her characters says, she does have PhD in biology.
The actual vampire bats are a combination of real bats, CGI and practical effects. They are quite credible as 'flitter mice'. Vampire bats are literally flying rodents, well, all bats are, and they are portrayed as being ugly, blood thirsty and generally disgusting which they sort of are. It's the bloodthirsty aspect which is exaggerated in this movie. Bross handles the gore aspects, the actual human attacks, well. There is enough blood and brutalized flesh to get the movie over the horror line but remember that it is made for television.
The first major bat attack sees parallel scenes of a kids rave and an adult soiree. Bross is trying. Writer, Doug Prochilo, pens non-cringeworthy lines though he did a marginally better job in Locusts, the precursor to Vampire Bats also starring Lawless.
All in all, Vampire Bats adds nothing to the bat movie sub-genre but it is a palatable 85 minutes of entertainment.
