After Dark Horrorfest: Mulberry Street

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 6, 2008

Moving right along with our continuing coverage of the After Dark Horrorfest, we come to the campy, low budget Mulberry Street. I hadn’t heard all that much about this one before seeing it, but from reading its description I knew it was probably best for me to treat this one as a rental, rather than a purchase.

The film follows a group of people as they try to survive a night where an infection has gone rampant through New York, devolving everyone infected into violent rat people. It’s not quite as cool as it sounds. Our characters are mostly forgettable, with some kid, some single mom, some over-the-top homosexual, a former boxer who punches ratpeople, his veteran daughter, and a couple of old farts. Substitute “zombie” with “rat people” and you basically know the plot if you’ve ever seen a zombie movie - people are trapped by the hungry villains and have to survive the night.

Kills

There is a decent amount of mayhem going on and a lot of people bite the dust. I’m not sure on the final count, but at least a bar full of people are munched on, random street goers are torn down, and an apartment complex gets ravaged.

Ills

The blood work is pretty good and we get to see a fair amount of it. There are scratches, bites, and face smashes. It’s not overwhelmingly good or even all that memorable, but while watching the film it was enough to keep me watching. There aren’t too many notable kills that make you scream “YESSSS!” but its pretty good for what it is.

Lust

Nothing really. Disappointing. There is one half-hearted sex scene near the start of it all, but this movie is not about showing the good stuff.

Learning

New York sucks. Ha! One common idea in infestation-type horror flicks is that you don’t want to be in a city. There are very few routes of escape and you end up on a roof of a high rise at some point, cut off from freedom. You also probably better off not listening to or interacting with old people, who make poor decisions, or caring about anyone enough to risk your own life, as that person will probably end up dead anyways.

Review

I didn’t really like this film, but you’re probably starting to get a sense of that already. There just wasn’t that much going on. Sure, there are rat people, but the direction lacked tension and the acting was passable, but nothing more. There were a lot of dumb character moments, the gay guy was waaaaay too over the top, and the ending was one that tried to reach for the stars but didn’t get its hand out of the gutter. Nick Damici as “Clutch” was pretty ok and I wouldn’t mind seeing him in something else, but overall, the film is totally “eh.”

When compared against the rest of the installments of After Dark, it probably ranks a few steps up from the bottom, but that’s because of weak rivals, not any strength on its own. Watch this only if you’re a completionist or if you have some sort of rat people fetish. The low budget (which really shows in the film/video quality) is a real hinderance and despite my kind nature (heh) there’s just nothing here that makes me want to recommend this to you.

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