I feel like I'm beginning to sound like a broken record when I tell you the now quite well known, and much despised, fact that when you want to see a low-budget, usually crappy, creature feature or a sequel to a not-that-great monster movie you can probably depend on the Sci-Fi Channel to fill the void. For years they've been cranking out these junkers in order to fill their programming schedule and I'm assuming they get decent enough ratings to keep doing so. How else can I explain the existence of Bats: Human Harvest?

While the 1999 original definitely wasn't anything worth remembering (and was pretty bad in its own right), the main problem with this follow-up is that it takes itself way too seriously and doesn't even try for the, mostly failed, camp of the first movie. Sure, the script by Brett Merryman and Chris Denk has quite a few sequences of heavily-armed soldiers firing off their machine guns while poor CGI bats randomly chew on people, but when things are being played so dryly and without any humour it's all dull as shit.

We're treated to bad accents and the film's cheap Bulgarian filming locations right away when an Army truck stops on the side of the road to investigate an abandoned bike and are killed by a mob of flesh-eating bats. Not long after that we're hooking-up with some American soldiers in Iraq as they storm a terrorist camp to hunt for a hidden weapon stash. This is a scene that's only purpose is some low-scale action and to introduce us to the bland military characters we'll spend most of the movie with later.

After their mission is over, our crew (which includes the rough and tumble Russo, played by David Chokachi) is paired up with a Russian guide and a medic in order to enter into the deadly Belzan Forest to recover a scientist. This leads to scenes of our soldiers arming themselves in slow-motion while heavy metal plays on the soundtrack, a moment where a local villagers arm is taken off by the bats (after which they just fly off), and a bunch of no-name actors getting to play Army as they get into various fire fights, run from bats, and find out their target, the good Doctor Walsh (Tomas Arana) is behind all of the winged creature shenanigans.

In the hands of visual effects man Jamie Dixon (who's only other directing credit is 1997's Shadowbuilder), Bats: Human Harvest is a pretty uninspiring time. Of course, I guess he could only do so much with limited cash and shooting schedule and he's certainly not helped by weak actors spouting lame dialogue. Then again, there really hasn't been any "killer bat" flicks worth your time unless you count the cheesiness of 1979's Nightwing or Ti West's moderately entertaining The Roost. I can't imagine it'd be very easy to wring much suspense from the blind, winged mammals and it's much easier to associate them as the shape-shifted form of vampires than as a threat on their own - even though the script doesn't give them much of a chance to be, throwing them into the background for much of the film and focusing on Arana's lame baddie instead.

Probably the scariest thing about Bats: Human Harvest is that it's even below the level of such Sci-Fi sequel dreck as Anaconda 3: Offspring and Lake Placid 2. It's yet another lazy and boring effort meant to provide the channel with more programming and proves that, apart from "Battlestar Galactica", they need to stop paying for such garage as this and just start licensing some classic science fiction movies instead. (Chris Hartley, 3/8/09)

Directed By: Jamie Dixon.
Written By: Brett Merryman, Chris Denk.

Starring: David Chokachi, Michael Jace, Pollyanna McIntosh, Martin Papazian.