Touches You

Too much of everything

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This movie was so good for the first 45 minutes, I almost wept when the second half went all to hell.Few movies capture the seedy underbelly of New York City in as raw a way. Parts of this movie look almost like they were filmed guerrilla- style. Indeed, in that respect, "Mulberry Street" hearkens back to the glorious '80s films of Frank Hennenlotter.Alas, this is no "Basket Case" or "Brain Damage." Because although director Jim Mickle imbues the film with the same gritty, neon-lit, back-alley feel characteristic of Hennenlotter, his failure is that while Hennenlotter expertly married the surrealism of real-life Manhattan with his bizarre stories and creations, this film, while showing that kind of promise early on, unfortunately has so little confidence in itself it devolves quickly and quite unfortunately into B-movie idiocy.The conceit is wonderful -- a new rat-borne disease is turning New Yorkers into flesh-eating zombies.Wouldn't a "28 Days Later" set in NYC and directed by Frank Hennenlotter be awesome? Keep hoping. Because although it looks like it's going that way for the first half, then the rat people show up.Yes, this rat-borne disease not only makes people zombies, it freakin' turns them into rat people.Ridiculous, pointy-eared, pointy-toothed rat people who squeak like rats and scurry about the floor on all fours.I wanted to weep, seriously weep, halfway through this movie, because when the first rat person showed up after 45 minutes of Hennenlotteresque gritty New York cinematography, interesting camera-work and real, untrained New Yorkers as actors, it felt like I'd found a real super-cool, smart, pretty and sassy girlfriend, and just learned too late she had the clap.Man this one looked like it was gonna be a real good one, too. What a disappointment.

I guess I just assumed that Mulberry Street would be another typical zombie movie when I heard of it a few years ago and I never saw anything in the ensuing years to make me think otherwise. Well, after finally catching a glimpse of this little gem, I can happily report that I was (mostly) wrong. Sure, there's a Night of the Living Dead vibe, but I also found resemblances to Cronenberg's Shivers and even The Warriors.We start off in NYC where underground rats are starting to get very aggressive. The story follows six or so residents of a run-down apartment building and the returning soldier daughter of one of the tenants and how they react to the horrifying attack on their city. As the rat attacks escalate and victims grow ever more violent, New York is essentially isolated and shut down, and our main characters mirror that while they are locked down in their building.So many things worked for me in this movie. The post 9/11 allegory of a New York under siege. Characters who looked like (and for the most part behaved like) real people. I genuinely liked our main characters, even though there wasn't a whole lot of time spent getting to know them in detail. The soundtrack was great. A few moments were genuinely tense. I also thought being just plunked down into the middle of the story worked and heightened my disorientation and paranoia.One thing I didn't care for was the odd lighting used in much of the film. A large portion of the movie takes place overnight and too much of it is too dark to really see what's happening. Other times, the action is lit in a neon green which is jarring, although it may be used to represent the "rat's eye view" as the plague takes over the city. Whatever - it's still hard to look at. Sometimes the editing was just too choppy and our heroes seem to want to fistfight the infected too often when other weapons would be more effective.Overall, Mulberry Street was unexpected, fast-paced, bleak, and even heartbreaking in a few spots. Regular folks in irregular situations often make for a pretty good horror movie, and I'd say this is one of those cases.ff

I enjoyed this.The camera work and editing were excellent - didn't feel low budget - and the dialogue in the first half was pretty skillful, setting up plot and character at the same time without being obvious.It turns into a standard last-man-standing horror flick, and you end up wondering why some of the characters were there in the first place. They could have done more with the father-daughter-lover angle, maybe given a bit of moral structure where the daughter avenges the father's infidelity by killing the zombie lover.Anyway, I watched this straight after Will Smith's take on the Omega Man - I Am Legend. Mulberry St is a better film.

In Manhattan, in a dilapidated building on Mulberry Street, the super Ross (Tim House) has trouble to repair the decayed systems to improve the lives of the tenants. The former boxer Clutch (Nick Damici) is a leader in the building and is anxiously waiting for the return of his beloved daughter Casey (Kim Blair) from a hospital for veterans after serving overseas. He prepares a surprising homecoming party for Casey with his gay neighbor Coco (Ron Brice). Clutch feels an attraction for her neighbor, the single mother and waitress Kay (Bo Corre), and her teenager son Otto (Javier Picayo) respects him like a father. Clutch is also close to Frank (Larry Medish), who is very sick, and his friend Charlie (Larry Fleischman). Meanwhile there is a rat attack in a subway station, followed by two others in different stations, and forcing the Major to showdown the public transport system. Sooner the victims bitten by rats turn into flesh eater mutants, attacking the other human beings and there is an outbreak that puts Manhattan in quarantine. The inhabitants have to fight to survive the attack of the ratlike creatures and Clutch gives his best effort trying to protect Casey and his friends."Mulberry Street" is an effective low-budget horror movie that really works. The characters are human, realistic and very well developed, creating an empathy with the viewer; the plot is simple but explains the origin of the outbreak; and the attack of the horde of mutants is gruesome and claustrophobic, recalling 1968 "Night of the Living Dead" and "REC". There is no final redemption in the non-commercial end, and for me it is another plus in this good film. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Infecção em Nova York" ("Infection in New York")