Mulberry Street (2006) poster

Mulberry Street (2006)

Rating:


USA. 2006.

Crew

Director/Visual Effects – Jim Mickle, Screenplay – Jim Mickle & Nick Damici, Producers – Adam Folk & Linda Moran, Photography – Ryan Samul, Music – Andreas Kapsalis, Makeup Effects – Eyespot Pictures (Supervisor – Adam Morrow), Production Design – Beth Mickle. Production Company – Belladonna Productions/Bulldog Films.

Cast

Nick Damici (Clutch), Kim Blair (Casey), Ron Brice (Coco), Tim House (Ross), Bo Corre (Kay), Antone Pagan (Peter Pace), Rodney Gray (Rodney), Javier Picayo (Otto), Larry Medich (Frank), John Hoyt (Big Vic), Adam Folk (Matthew)


Plot

In New York City, property redevelopment stirs up what lies in the tunnels beneath the city. People start to become infected by rat bites, which cause them to rapidly transform into rat-like creatures. Soon the city is under attack by these rat hybrid creatures. The tenants of one apartment building fight a ferocious siege as the rat creatures attack.


Mulberry Street was the first film from Jim Mickle who has since become a reasonable genre presence. He followed this with the standout vampire film Stake Land (2010), the English-language remake of We Are What We Are (2013), the adaptation of the Joe R. Lansdale thriller Cold in July (2014) and the unexpectedly great time travel film In the Shadow of the Moon (2019). More recently, Mickle went on to create the tv series’ Hap and Leonard (2016-8) adapted from Joe R. Lansdale’s stories and Sweet Tooth (2021- ) about post-apocalyptic animal hybrids.

This was the first screen collaboration between Mickle and actor Nick Damici who has worked as an actor and co-written most of Mickle’s films. Mickle and Damici had met as students at university and originally conceived of making a zombie film. After attracting some financing, they put the film together using a group of friends and setting it around a single apartment building location.

Nick Damici in Mulberry Street (2006)
The film’s star/co-writer Nick Damici at siege in the apartment

Mulberry Street is a Zombie Film in all but name. Instead of zombies, we have humans transformed into rat hybrids – see Human-Animal Hybrids. No particular explanation is given for the rat creatures other than a property development company having stirred up things in the sewers – we see various scenes of the rats biting people. Other than that, this could be a zombie film in all essential ways – the various tenants under siege in their apartment building becomes in essence an urbanized Night of the Living Dead (1968).

Mickle adopts a tense and claustrophobic style. The film is shot in a series of rapid, kinetic cuts and lots of handheld camera and closeups. This may well be something that was forced on him by the way the film’s low budget. However, along with the shooting in cramped, dreary apartment buildings, the upshot is a film that creates a considerable sense of claustrophobia, tension and frenetic energy in its siege.


Trailer here


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