Description

You might not expect one of the most powerful horror films in years to be an indie epic about New York city under siege by its own citizens, virally transformed into animalistic flesh-eating monsters, but devastation seldom comes from an obvious place, does it? In Mulberry Street, the routine of daily life changes forever when, one morning, an inexplicable wave of rat attacks occurs across New York City. Those bitten fall ill and begin to change in horrific ways, undergoing painful physical mutation and becoming as impulsively violent as the rats that attacked them. In a frighteningly short amount of time, New York’s streets spin out of control and into a whirlwind of blood, bone and agony. The transit system shuts down, police seem to disappear and citizens are left to fend for themselves. In a decaying tenement building on Mulberry Street, a group of tenants –- an aging former boxer, his daughter who just that day returned from serving in Iraq and whose face has been disfigured in battle, a single mother, her son, and an assortment of alcoholics, addicts and medically-fragile pensioners, all struggling well below the poverty line -- watch their city change and fight against all odds to survive, under terrifying attack by their own neighbours.

In a genre that often prioritizes extreme circumstances over characters, here’s a film that has it both ways and tears the house down. Like a ’70s George Romero or Larry Cohen film directed by an ’80s Abel Ferrara, or what we might have seen had Charles Bukowski written a monster movie, this is a disarmingly authentic, socially conscious work populated with characters whose weaknesses make them whole. Characters who barely stand a chance once crisis explodes. As a grisly analogy to the abandonment that many of America’s poorest faced in recent calamities like 9/11 and Katrina, Mulberry Street’s screams echo from a very painful place. When hell comes shrieking at the front doors of its down-and-out protagonists, nobody is there to help. It also takes some very dark jabs at gentrification. Director Jim Mickle, who also co-wrote, shot and edited both picture and sound, is an extraordinary talent and possibly the single most exciting thing to happen to the genre this year. The fact his film was shot on an ultra-low budget makes its impact all the more awe-inspiring. Easily one of the saddest and most poignant horror films in recent memory, Mulberry Street is a brilliantly executed terror trip for a wounded new world.

—Mitch Davis

“Sober and very intense. The best movie I saw at Tribeca” – ARROW IN THE HEAD

“An allegory for post-9/11 Manhattan, Mulberry Street is anything but your run-of-the-mill horror flick” – Logan DeSisto, FANGORIA

Website

http://www.mulberrystreetmovie.com/

Credits

Director: Jim Mickle
Screenplay: Nick Damici, Jim Mickle
Cast: Nick Damici Kim Blair Ron Brice
Producers: Adam Folk, Linda Moran
Distributor: Lions Gate