Mulberry Street is a kind of strange movie. Basically its premise is the same as that of every zombie movie. You got a New York neighborhood plagued with rats and after being bitten some residents turn into rat people who pretty much act like zombies and infest the whole neighborhood. The budget was low, the FX were simple and so the director is obviously trying to hide the cheap creature FX with hectic camera moves which often remind of Blair Witch and the likes. Its hard to rate this movie... the FX are not important anyway since Mulberry Street doesn't rely on creature FX and gore and rather tries to create atmosphere like "28 days later". A lot of time is spent introducing the next door types in a house that seems to be soon torn down by an investor (signs saying "The neighborhood is changing" point to this and get a very cynical double meaning later). When the plague hits the inhabitants basically try to survive the night and the main character, a boxer hits the rat-zombies a lot like in "The stink of flesh", so no shooting here. There is some critical undertones like the bleak re-union of the boxer with his girlfriend who comes home from service in Iraq to just another mess. Regular TV news clips hint to media and government misinformation and a lot looks like conspiracy theories thrown in. The pacing of the movie is pretty slow, at times close to boring. But although the shaky camera tends to get annoying and many details just are shaken down Mulberry Street is in some way hypnotic with the calm music and blurry imagery. The budget obviously was minimal, so the director did a nice job after all. Anyway I think the ending is way off and after all the movie seems to lead nowhere which gave me a bad taste when the credits rolled. There is far worse movies around, but since Mulberry Sreet had me with its hypnotic vibe its too bad it lets you off the hook by not giving any meaning in the end... and there's sure plenty of hints to actual social problems given throughout the movie. Could have been so much better.

After having seen a few low budget zombie movies a while back, my love for the genre faded and nowadays knowing that a film is both low budget and a zombie movie is liable to put me off seeing it; the reason being that while these films often show great enthusiasm, they can be seriously lacking in creativity. Well you could of course argue that this is not a zombie film as the central monsters are strange rat creatures rather than the classic zombie monsters...but it's basically just the same difference, and arguing that this film is not a zombie film would be as futile as saying the 2002 zombie film '28 Days Later' is not a zombie film. Anyway, what we basically have here is just your average zombie outbreak idea and we focus on an apartment block on 'Mulberry Street'. It turns out that there's something funny going on with the rats under the apartment block and all hell breaks lose when a man is bitten and starts showing signs of...turning into a giant rat. The infection quickly spreads, leading to a fight for life for the survivors.

The film is very short at only eighty minutes and was obviously set on a limited budget; thus meaning that it doesn't have a great deal of scope and we basically just focus on the central characters. This makes for decent enough entertainment, but the film is lacking in several areas and a lot of it feels rather thin. We don't get any details about the actual virus; which isn't that disappointing when you consider the usual reasons behind a zombie outbreak (a virus, radiation from space etc), but since this film has dared to change the formula a little in having people turn into rats; it would be nice to have some sort of reasoning behind it. The film has plenty of action, gore and horror images; but the problem is how it's portrayed. Director Jim Mickle has unfortunately opted to go down the flashy MTv-style photography route, and the result is that it's very difficult to see what is going on, and this kind of kills the film in terms of entertainment value. However, Mulberry Street does at least have enough good points to make it a worthwhile viewing and zombie fans should find something to like.

I am a big fan of Jim Mickle's work to this point, having seen and thoroughly enjoyed his last 3 movies, including the impressive vampire film STAKE LAND and his recent COLD IN JULY. I had not yet, though, seen his debut movie so was excited when it came on demand for me to finally get the chance.

I would say, though, that this movie does not come close to the quality of his later films. There are some bright, inspired moments and some good ideas here, but there are just as many negatives that I could point to, which really keep this film from being a decent, but mediocre genre flick. In short, the ideas are good, but the execution often falls flat. That's no surprise, though, given the inexperience of the director at the time and the low budget they had to work with.

In essence, it's an infection movie. That handicaps it right off the bat for me. No matter what wrapping you want to put your infection in and what spin you want to give it, the fact remains that we've been there, done that and been there again. So, to impress me with an infection flick you really have to up the game. The idea of using rats is a little unique and I certainly give them some credit for the "were-rat" creatures which were creative and at times very effective.

Typically, when a low budget indie is going to give me another re- tread of the infection flick there are limited ways to make that stand out. The best I've seen usually give me memorable characters, good acting or a really well-developed script. I didn't feel any of those coming from this one. The characters are never developed in any way that I grew attached to them, the acting and dialog is so limited that the actors aren't even given the chance to impress and the script is far too reliant on action for me. To top it off, the committed what was the worst sin by giving me two horrible cliché endings for our main characters. Who couldn't have predicted the old "hero gets bit at the last minute of the film" routine? Then, to put the icing on the cliché cake, we get the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD ending where our final hero has escaped all the violence only to be killed by overzealous government officials.

The biggest drawback for me was the directorial style, which is surprising given that I'm pretty much an advocate of Mickle's genius. There are too many gimmicks and tricks here that really wreak of a film student trying out all the stuff he just learned in class. Odd camera angles, odd soundtrack music, too many zooms and pans, all of it looks like your average film school project.

This is not, at all, to say this movie is all negative. I'm pointing out some faults that kept it from being as good as I hoped, bu there's a lot to enjoy here, as well. The movie has an excellently crafted claustrophobic feeling, given the setting of the apartment complex. It kept me solidly engaged throughout its' run time, as I didn't really find the pacing to bog down at any point.

You can see all the trademarks of a director who was soon to go on to much better things, but they are still being honed in this debut.