MulberrySt

Mulberry St. (2006)

This is one of those After Dark Horror Fest movies that I just never got around to seeing when it first came out. But when I had the chance to pick up a copy on the cheap I decided to go ahead and see what I had missed. The story here revolves around a tenement building in New York City. The movie starts right as a strange virus breaks out across the city. This virus, carried by rats, infects humans and mutates them into killer rats. If that weren’t bad enough if you get bit by one of the infected people you also turn into a killer rat person. And before I get any angry emails don’t get mad at me, because this isn’t a spoiler considering for the last 4 years this has been referred to the human killer rat movie! Anyways we follow the inhabitants of one building as they try and survive until help comes for them.

There are things that I really like about Mulberry St. The New York City setting gives the movie a gritty feel to it that you just don’t get anywhere else. Of course I’ve always been a sucker for movies shot in and around New York City, so I might be a bit biased here. But the locations bring something to the movie that it just wouldn’t have had if it were shot on a farm in Wisconsin. Like I’ve said in many other reviews the city itself is almost a character. I also think that some of the attacks are handled very well and can be scary and tense. The sequence in the bar where the mutated humans attack the patrons comes to mind. But there are several other attacks that work just as well. I also loved the song that opens the movie. It has a cool ‘70s vibe to it that I really dug and for me at least fit nicely with the setting and overall feel of the flick. Finally I have to say that the practical makeup effects on the mutated human rats are nifty. This movie is basically a creature feature and that means that the look of the “monsters” is vital and the filmmakers do a great job.

But there are also things that I didn’t like about the movie. The story is your basic board up the windows type of survivor narrative that we have all seen a million times. While it is handled okay, there wasn’t anything to set the movie apart from the rest of this type of movie. I also have a bit of an issue with the pacing. The movie starts off really slow and takes far too long to get the characters in place and get to the good stuff. I guess they were trying to get us involved and caring about the characters, but for the most part they are cookie cutter stereotypes. I mean as someone who has watched piles of horror movies I could identify and pretty much knew who was going to make it and who wasn’t. It would have been nice if the movie had thrown a few twists at the audience, but it doesn’t. This movie also suffers from the curse of the last decade, and that is the shaky camera syndrome. There are parts of the movie that are really hard to watch and honestly I had no idea what was happening.

I’m thinking that you might want to either rent Mulberry St. or if you can pick it up on the cheap (like I did) do so. I doubt this is going to be one of those movies that you will revisit very often, but it is interesting enough to check out once.

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer