"Bats" is not so much a 'bad' film; it's just very ordinary and déjà-vu. This is your typical creature-feature about a genetically mutated animal-species (in this case: bats, duh!) that becomes a little TOO intelligent after the experiments performed on them and turns against the creators. And of course the two escaped lab-bats infect the normal ones and pretty soon an entire Texas town is overcome by millions of carnivorous bats! It's up to zoologist Dina Meyer, her dim assistant Leon and sheriff Lou Diamond Phillips to prevent that this plague spreads itself throughout the entire United States. This film has quite a few good aspects going for it, but also too many negative ones and the latter make this is a generally unmemorable and lacking horror film. The most important positive element about "Bats" is that the screenplay doesn't waste any time! There clearly is a bat-problem and all the characters immediately acknowledge this. Usually in this type of B-movies, it takes another boring hour or so before everyone accepts that harmless little animals can turn into bloodthirsty monsters. Unfortunately, this is where the praising stops
After the no-nonsense opening sequences, the film turns into an endless series of dull clichés, lousy dialogues, bad acting and terrible special effects. In fact, there are no special effects! The numerous bat-attacks exist of wide pan-shots of the sky but when the critters eventually descend to assault their preys, everything becomes all blurry and you can't possibly make out what's happening. It's hard to take the acting leads seriously (Dina Meyer as a Doctor??) and Leon's character is just a dreadful stereotype of the petrified and witty assistant who brings some comic relief. Worth watching if you really don't have anything better to do
