You might be surprised at the tension that pervades this enjoyably cheesy movie.
Comment
04/17/01
Bats (1999)
18
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:40
Fresh:7
Rotten:33
Average Rating:3.4/10
Consensus: Neither scary nor creepy.
Runtime: 1 hr 31 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Synopsis: An unruly gang of genetically altered bats threatens to take over a small western town. Now it's up to a bat expert (Dina Meyer) and the local sheriff (Lou Diamond Phillips from LA BAMBA) to stop... [More]
Starring: Lou Diamond Phillips, Dina Meyer, Bob Gunton, Leon
Director: Louis Morneau
Reviews for Bats
Top CriticAn unholy, humourless splicing of The Birds and The Swarm, with neither the true terror of the first or hokey charm of the latter.
01/01/00
Top CriticNow here we go, a resolutely B-movie thriller with delusions of grandeur.
12/10/01
Bats sticks to the ground rules of its genre and gets through a story at once predictable and preposterous with an ingratiating absence of pretension.
12/02/02
The bat attacks are a series of violent camera pans rendering everything a blur; the continuity and computer-generated imagery is dire; and the dialogue stinks, as do the performances.
06/24/06
Top CriticShaving the corns off of your toes is time better spent.
02/14/01
Well, let’s not judge Destination Films on the basis of just one film. If we did, it would be a studio set to flap its wings and fly off into oblivion really soon.
01/01/00
A movie that's too unintentionally funny to be scary.
02/24/09
Bats has nothing to do with baseball or Bela Lugosi. Too bad, because either would be a welcome distraction from this cheesy B-flick about genetically altered man-eating bats.
02/21/04
Granted, the bat/vampire crossover audience might find something here, but only, I think, if they're tremendously bored.
01/01/00
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03/24/02
The film skillfully mixes in humor (thanks in great part to the straight-faced clichéd phrases and no-nonsense lines delivered by Leon) without undermining the tension.
06/05/02
This bad-scientist movie about bats that attack humans and the humans who track them -- Texas sheriff Lou Diamond Phillips and zoologist Dina Meyer -- is played straight, though it wasn't intended to be taken that way.
02/24/09
...uried in clichés and swarms of mutant-like bats who, at a distance, look like nothing more than inkblots with hidden agendas.
01/01/00
No amount of low expectations could truly prepare you for the horror of watching this film.
01/01/00
You really want to like it. It's kind of funny in a simple, old-fashioned kind of way, like the B-movies of old. But it really doesn't have much energy or imagination.
06/03/06
Mainly it made me wish I was watching the Murnau film instead.
01/01/00
Low-rent horror garbage, and one of those rare theatrical outings that actually deserves to be relegated to the junk bin at video stores across the world.
01/01/00
Bats attacking bad actors. Sounds good to me!
01/01/00
Director Louis Morneau tries to liven things up with some intentional humor, but it is so conventional it doesn't really go anywhere.
01/01/00
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