Horror Movie Review: Bats (2021)

Bats, aka Bats: The Awakening, was written by Scott Jeffrey who co-directed it with Rebecca Matthews. It stars Megan Purvis, Georgia Conlan, Amanda-Jade Tyler, Ricardo Freitas and Kate Sandison.

Starting off familiar but hot, as a group of teens break into an abandoned house and are killed by some sort of human/bat hybrid. It’s a dark opening scene so it’s not exactly clear what is happening but you really do get the classic 80’s monster vibes from it.

Some time later, it’s a home-coming of sorts for Georgie (Kate Sandison), her sister Amelia (Georgia Conlan), their parents Lisa (Amanda-Jade Tyler) and Rick (Ricardo Freitas), and her grand-daughter, Jamie (Megan Purvis). The latter is given the most to wrestle with here as she is grieving the recent death of her fiancé.

The family are returning to their long-abandoned home that they left years before after something contaminated the local area. Of course, this house is the house from the beginning. The same house that is home to some sort of giant bat creature and his smaller pals.

What is this creature? Some sort of mutation. If that sounds lazy, don’t blame us. It’s the most explaining the film does. Considering the old-school monster feel to this movie, it’s kind of ok. It’s a giant bat-monster (that looks pretty good), who cares about where it came from.

Unfortunately, Bats gets bogged down by drama, Jamie’s drama. Now her character is likable enough and Megan Purvis a mighty fine actor but, in a movie called Bats, you just want bats! Not to say, we can’t have characters and development but Bats focuses all its energies on Jamie with little time for anyone else.

Early on, the movie feels slow but once the bat-monstrosity is discovered, it really picks up the pace. As we said, the effects on the creature are decent and it’s kept in the shadows to hide any obvious flaws. Then we have the gore, some of which is also decent, provided you don’t pick over it with microscope.

Some nice moments of tension, some thrilling violence and an eventual peppy pace makes this a watchable horror movie. Nothing particularly special but certainly not a waste of time either.