28 Days Later + C.H.U.D. - story = Mulberry Street

I just saw "Mulberry Street" a couple days ago - here's a link to the official site. They definitely had a bit more budget than a lot of the crap/low-budget gems that I'm used to watching and it had a great feel to it - almost exactly like "28 Days Later". "Mulberry Street" screened at a ton of festivals, is part of the "8 Films to Die For" festival that runs November 9 - 18 across the country and Lionsgate picked it up, so you can expect to see it out on DVD soon. It's a great film to watch if you've got some budget and want to know what the festivals are looking for. It had a dark, artsy feel and I'm pretty sure it had some sort of politcal/sociological slant, but I'm not entirely sure. I was a bit buzzed and into the rat people.

Speaking of the rat people, they reminded me of C.H.U.D.'s, which, of course, can only be a good thing. The all-time classic, "C.H.U.D", takes place in New York and is about a bunch of deformend, cannibalistic, humanoid, underground dwelling vagrants, who lived in the sewers and ate people... "Mulberry Street" takes place in New York and is about an outbreak that turns people into a bunch of deformed, cannibalistic, humanoid, above-ground dwelling rat creatures who eat people. You know what they say, don't try to reinvent the wheel, ripping off classics is just paying homage to it. And, yes, I'm calling "C.H.U.D." a classic.

Side note here: C.H.U.D. needs to be remade...

My only issue with "Mulberry Street" was with the writing, which is a minor flaw when you're talking about horror. For example, I just read that one viewer thought that the girl coming back to find the boxer was his girlfriend and I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be his daughter. That storyline is weaved throughout the entire movie, so if two movie-goers have completely different opinions about who she even IS, you've got a problem. That's not to mention the fact that I had no clue of what the hell was going on with her at any point in the movie. She had a massive scar on her face that caused her plenty of psychological grief, yet it was never really explained. Granted, it was the fourth horror movie I saw in the span of around 11 hours, so I could've just missed that because I was up grabbing a beer, but that's beside the point. Also, for a movie that was about people turning into rats, it was a little short on humor. You really shouldn't take yourself too seriously when you have people mutating into vermen. I could go on, but I risk spoiling the intricacies of the plot, which was basically - people turn into rats, rat people eat normal people.

I did like it, though. Really. It just goes to show that you don't have to be David Mamet to write horror. In fact, they could've dumbed this down a bit, eased up on the plotty stuff and gone into the rat people a bit more. Ahh... save that for the sequel, "Mulberry Street 2: Matt the Rat".