Mulberry Street
Where the streets have no names...well, except for all the ones that do
New York City is a
great location for horror movies. Plenty of scary things happen there
in the real world so it's only natural that horror films would fit
in. Whether it's Cloverfield or Midnight Meat Train, or C.H.U.D., the
city allows for all sorts of scary genres and subgenres. In a city
where anybody can feel like a nobody, anything can happen. You can
have large cataclysmic events or self-contained person terrors. In
the case of Mulberry Street, you get both.
Mulberry Street is
a 2007 “zombie” movie released by After Dark Films (Zombies Of
Mass Destruction, The Deaths Of Ian Stone). The movie stars Nick
Damici (World Trade Center, Stake Land) as Clutch, a retired boxer
living in a shabby apartment on Mulberry Street in New York City.
Clutch's daughter Casey (Kim Blair, The Look, The Mighty Macs) is a
soldier returning home to New York from war, sporting fresh scars on
her face from battle. Clutch is preparing for her return with his
friend Coco, when strange news reports about rat attacks across the
city start to come out. The building's super Ross is busy fixing all
sorts of problems with the buildings when he is bitter by a diseased
rat. Ross begins to slowly transform, first with coarse hair growing
on his body and then facial mutations. Similar mutations occur across
Manhattan as the city shuts down public transportation in hopes of
containing the outbreak, which is transmitted through infected bites,
from spreading. Waves of violent cannibal attacks stretch across the
city as Casey tries to reach her father. Ross has now become a
full-fledged zombie with Clutch and Coco fighting him off and locking
him in a closet. At the same time, Clutch ventures out into the
mayhem to find his neighbor, Kay (Bo Corre, Eldorado, Harrow Island)
whom he has feelings for. He finds Kay at the bar she works at and
the two fight off the infected people, who now resemble giant
humanoid rats. Casey, who stole a car, manages to find her father,
but Kay is grabbed by a zombie before they could save her. Quarantine
is declared for the city with scientists and soldiers planning to
come in and exterminate the infected. They make it back to the
apartment and barricade themselves inside. Ross has escaped the
closet and is crawling around the walls of the apartment. With the
infected inside the walls and pounding at the door how will the
tenants of Mulberry street survive?
"Oh, Lordy! Save me, Cheeseus!"
There's some debate
online if this movie is officially a zombie movie or not since the
infected are technically mutated rat people and not the undead. For
all intensive purposes, Mulberry Street is most definitely a zombie
movie. All the tropes are there: infection caused by a bite,
mutation, cannibalism, loss of humanity, and swarms of mindless
monsters chasing the uninfected. I mean, there's a scene straight out
of Night Of The Living Dead where the mutants hands are coming
through the door trying to grab Clutch and Casey. Just because one
detail has been changed from typical zombie canon does not change
what the movie is about. The story itself is fairly standard zombie
fair, complete with chase scenes and bloody violence. The movie
smartly uses New York City as the setting for the movie. The
infection spreads incredibly fast (the events of the movie take place
in just one day) and the quarantine makes sense, as Manhattan is an
island. In all likelihood, it wouldn't have worked, but for the
story, it's acceptable. If you've in a New York City subway station,
you've seen the rats, so the basic concept is sound as well.
Unfortunately, we never get a reason as to why the rat bites are
changing people. It would have been nice to get some sort of clue
just to add to the overall horror. Was it a chemical leak or nuclear
waste? How about a comet hit the city? Just give me something to work
with.
The lack of a
reason, while not important to the story itself, does present another
overall problem in the movie and that's a lack of social commentary.
Like all good zombie movies, there needs to be a bigger overall
meaning to the movie. While other zombie movies question human nature
or our impact on the environment, Mulberry Street pretty much ignores
all of this. I thought they might be building something with Casey,
showing her post-traumatic stress from the war or hiding her scars,
but nothing came from it. Even the ending was another lost
opportunity, with soldiers coming to the apartment to kill the
infected. It was a good chance to talk about government conspiracies
or human nature, but again, we get nothing. I don't need to be
preached at, believe me, but I need something more than just “mutant
rat people overrun New York City”.
Mulberry Street is
obviously a low budget horror movie as most of the movie is shot
within the apartment and on public streets. The movie gets the most
of it's actors thanks to good performances from everyone. On paper,
the idea of Mulberry Street sounds silly, but it's actually a decent
horror film. You can probably compare it to 28 Days Later in terms of
fast chase scenes and frantic action. The violence is good with a
fair amount of blood and gore. The mutated rat people look decent,
though the camera never really focuses on them, so I can't really
determine if the makeup and effects were great. My biggest issue
with the movie is the grainy, low quality footage. Some scenes are
perfectly clear, but it's when they venture outside of the apartment
where the quality of the footage goes down the drain. The poor
quality of the film makes multiple scenes extremely difficult to see
what is happening. It's not an artist decision by the director, it's
just a cheap camera and the rest of the movie suffers for it.
Seriously, did they smudge sand all over the camera when they shot this?
Mulberry Street is
a decent zombie movie that tries to make the most out of a low
budget. While the idea of mutant rat people running loose in New York
City sounds worth of the SyFy channel, the movie is actually not as
silly as it sounds. There is a good amount of action and violence
with some nice suspense. The acting is what helps keep the movie from
becoming ridiculous. The biggest problems in the movie come from the
low quality of the film during certain scenes and the lack of social
commentary. Mulberry Street has it's moments and with a bigger budget
and a little more thought in the script, it could have been great.
6.5/10
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