[Bats 2:Human Harvest]
Plot:Centers on a group of soldiers who are on a mission to capture a fanatical terrorist who has escaped into the maze of caves underlying the landscape Chechnya. As the troops close in on his hiding place, they encounter one major obstacle...genetically altered bats with a taste for human flesh.

Cast: Tomas Arana, David Chokachi, Bill Cusack, Melissa De Sousa, Jon Falcone, Lance Frank, Michael Jace, Todd Jensen, Ivan Kotsev, Pollyanna McIntosh, Hristo Mitzkov, Marty Papazian, Ivo Simeonov, Mike Straub, George Zlatarev.

My Thoughts:This harvest isn't fit for human consumption.

Review:It's a funny thing about "Bats 2", that people thought "Bats" from way back in 1999 was such a bad film that "Bats 2" wasn't even worth making. Honestly, with a cast of pretty decent actors like Dina Meyer, Leon, and Lou Diamond Phillips, "Bats" managed to be a pretty likeable nature-gone-wrong horror flick. Of course leave it to the SCI-FI Channel to take something average, and then tag onto it a dreadful needless sequel which will ruin the already shaky rep of what came before it. "Bats 2:Human Harvest" has a group of U.S. soldiers searching for brilliant scientist who's specialty is genetics, which of course leads to him genetically altering a pack of bats and using them as his own personal army so to speak, to keep the americans from capturing him.

So the problems with "Bats 2"? Well...let's start off with the fact that this film was so under the radar and lost in no-one-gives-a-rats-ass land that the film is set in Chechnya, yet the plot outline all over the net still says it's set in Afghanistan. Obviously some changes were made to the films setting, which were for the worst in my estimation. Watching this film take place in the hot and sunny desert regions of Afghanistan might've been less painful than watching it take place in the dreary, dark, lifeless regions of Chechnya.

But as I said, this film was such a non-concern that I'm sure the producers washed their hands of it the minute production wrapped up and no one cared to tell any film sites that the movie had undergone a setting change, and even if they did....it's not like anyone would really care to make the corrections considering it's a SCI-FI original picture. "Bats 2" offers up what many other horror films involving U.S. troops and foreign troops offers up. Sharp-tongued bickering and banter exchanged between the foreigners and the americans, a possible love connection between one U.S. troop and a foreign woman, and some honorable sacrifice scenes where some poor schmoe throws themselves to the wolves for the good of his country...yada, yada, yada.

We've seen this all before many times, and in "Bats 2", there's not even a hint of originality or attempted originality to any of it. The film pretty much wastes it's time doing nothing to get the viewer interested. Instead it just wanders around aimlessly and is more of an action film than anything. The bats (who are extremely obvious CGI creations), make a few appearances here and there but they are not taking centerstage as they did in the first "Bats" film. This movie is so different from "Bats" that you begin to wonder why the film is even titled "Bats 2:Human Harvest". It becomes obvious that for ratings and DVD sales purposes, the title was just slapped on there hoping the three or four fans of the first film would get all giddy with excitement and tune in.

But in reality this is all a moot point because the first film wasn't popular enough to gain even a small cult following. It would've made so much more sense to have the bats attack another small Texas town or something. But instead, the film takes the action outside the states, and then injects a mad Russian scientist into the mix. Sure, the title may suggest otherwise, but to me...it just felt like SCI-FI came up with another nature-run-amok stinker, and decided to slap the "Bats 2" tag onto it hoping to gain attention.

The poor performances, and lack of action are just the final two nails in this films coffin, a coffin which I hope stays closed forever. "Bats 2" is another forgettable SCI-FI original sequel to a decent first installment. This is starting to become a sad, and very pathetic trend. If any ideas are in the works for "Bats 3", hopefully a few bomb threats are called in to halt production. For crying out loud, human beings shouldn't be subjected to such horrors of lousy filmmaking.

Positives:When the end credits started up.

Negatives:Bad script, bad acting, lack of action, lack of blood and gore, and overall no entertainment value what-so-ever.

Overall:Buy this on dvd only if you've run out of coasters to sit your drinks on.





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