Whenever there’s a movie set in New York City, wondering if there might be rats is just part of the game plan. In Mulberry Street, we get to have a dose of rats in a whole new way that is a shining part of what separates this film from a host of other horror films that really don’t quite get past the genre basics. While it’s certainly a genre film, it does set some new expectations for creativity and the story here is solid enough to please those who actually did want to be entertained with more than just special effects. We start out with rats biting folks in an apartment complex. Normal enough from the sound of it, right?

Wrong. What appears at first as if it might turn into a movie filled with teeming swarms of rats, instead takes a different direction. These rats, they’re not normal rats and not even special New York City rats the size of Rottweilers. No, the situation is a whole lot more dire than just that. These particular rats carry a terrible disease that actually turns people into what amounts to rat people. This leads to a whole new level of creepy and weird which strangely, works pretty efficiently to get the level of suspense up there. However, the reliance on poorly lit scenes and lots of jumpy camera work doesn’t really make for the most pleasant viewing experience at times and it keeps the action rather difficult to follow on the screen.

Thankfully, the cast of characters keep things interesting and carry the tale because it is based off of a fairly decent script for the most part. If your tastes in horror go more towards the older standard of sappy moments that are about the human spirit rising over adversity versus the more recent trend in total dripping nihilism, then you are likely to enjoy this film because it provides plenty of those types of moments as the apartment dwellers hustle to survive the rat people invasion and defend their home from a threat they really don’t understand. However, that is going to come across as cheesy to some folks so it’s definitely a good idea to realize this going in.

This is, at heart, a traditional survival horror tale where you get to wonder who all will survive and guess what the folks will do to defend themselves against the rat people hybrids. It’s a definitely relief since it’s not another zombie film and actually offers something slightly fresh, but this reviewer would not go quite so far as to insist that it’s a must see movie. It’s moderate and at this point in the horror world, we need all the moderate we can get.

Especially if we get unique and weird monsters to jazz up the monster movie genre. Mulberry street offers a good enough script, decent enough direction and the unique injection of its monsters. Doing more of this type of film certainly would not hurt audiences and with a little bit bigger budget, we could see a few more monster movie blockbusters. Definitely a trend to demand, horror fans.