The Roost (2005)

Creature Feature? Check Vampire bats? Check Zombies? Check Full moon? Check Halloween night? CheckThis movie has reached campy awesomeness. It is sort of like "The Birds" meets "Night of the Living Dead" while narrated in a black and white "Creature Feature" style. This film does an amazing job of paying homage to classic horror themes. While I find it odd that that vampire bats turn people into zombies rather than vampires...I strangely loved this film. The acting is better than most acting I find in student films. The director created amazing tension. This film does not have a complex plot that will make you want to watch it time and again, it was very entertaining and fulfilling for those of who love the classic horror genre. I also enjoyed the campy fun and chuckled several times throughout the film as I recognized those tell-tale themes that this film tipped its hat to. I felt as if I was watching a version of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, but with bats instead of birds.

I've been coming to IMDb for a long time and have always felt it a great source of movie info. I've even let the reviews sway me one way or the other, but this is the first time I've ever written one. What drove me to take the plunge you may ask? The hype surrounding this movie! I was really looking forward to seeing The Roost after reading about it here and visiting its exciting and fun website. For all intents and purposes, it sounded like the second coming of a drive in classic. Bats and zombies and tension. A young director who has been hailed as one of the best in the business. How could you go wrong? Well, for starters, you could watch this movie. Afterwards, you could puzzle for hours, days even, about what the hype was all about. Did the reviewers actually watch this film? Did they all owe the director a favor? And what about people here championing this? I'm dumbfounded.Let me assure everyone here that I'm not a movie snob. I love low budget horror. I appreciate the sacrifices that have to be made to make a movie. Any movie. But I do expect a movie as hyped as this one to make good on some of its claims. Like the amazing direction I was supposed to be seeing. Hmmm... Were the reviewers talking about the endless static shots? The shots that would linger for decades? Were they talking about the way characters wandered in and out of focus? Were they talking about the moody lighting? News flash: using a flashlight to light a field does not constitute moodiness. Were their allusions to tension regarding dialog sequences that went absolutely nowhere? I'm giving The Roost a 3, solely for the special effects, which were pretty good in spots. As far as the rest of it: run away!

In my opinion, this movie is getting a really bad rap from a lot of your viewers. Perhaps, it is because this film reminded me of the old "Fright Night" television show that appeared in Louisville, Kentucky area on Saturday nights at 7p.m. That particular show always opened with a scene of an old local Victorian style mansion embedded in a sea of fog with a short introduction by a character called the "Fearmonger" played by a local celebrity named Charlie Kissenger as he introduced one of the old 1940 Universal Horror Classics. This film seemed to try to spoof that wonderful bygone era. The actual film that followed the introduction, "The Roost" reminded me a lot like the grainy amateur style filming of the "Blair Witch Project". The fact that a group of people on their way to a wedding are attacked by a coven of vampire bats, and that once they are bitten begin to act like a bunch of zombies seem to be an entertaining spoof that served as a low budget bridge to times gone by. I for one enjoyed this film, and recommend it to anyone who like a good horror film.

I really wanted to love this moody and minimalist zombified-by-bat-bites flick, but it was unbelievably slow-paced. It has a brooding and creepy atmosphere, but nothing occurs in the first 40 minutes except bickering amongst young folk. I appreciated that the main story went for horror and not comedy, unlike most contemporary zombie features, but that goes out the window with the fact that the movie is introduced (and interrupted) by some silly fake TV horror host. That part of the film comes across as filler, which is unfortunate in a film that already moves way to slow and has a lack of action, dialogue, etc. If 30 minutes were edited, this could make a sweet short film or TV episode.