Mulberry Street

In the ultra-low-budget horror flick Mulberry Street, director Jim Mickle, who cowrote the script with one of his stars, Nick Damici, spins a tale of newly aggressive New York City rats turning on the human population, transmitting a virus that mutates victims into murderous, mindless “rat-people.” Another entry in the “infection noir” subgenre that has bubbled up out of the zeitgeist in the era of SARS and avian flu fears, the film doesn't wallow in visual gore, instead relying on squishy sound effects, low light, and the audience's imagination to scare up unease and anxiety, while skillfully utilizing the inherent craziness of the city as a free backdrop: sirens, crowds, or cops standing around on a corner, surreptitiously shot. What lingers is the Noo Yawk City-ness of the film as it tells a post-9/11 story in which a handful of slated-for-eviction residents of an old tenement building on the title street make a stand, combining the right mix of paranoia and pragmatism in characters that are more credible than the usual horror film protagonists. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include 19 minutes of “Miss Horrorfest Contest Webisodes,” nine minutes of storyboards, a makeup test segment (4 min.), outtakes (3 min.), deleted scenes (2 min.), early sketches by director Jim Mickle (2 min.), a behind-the-scenes segment on “The Rats” (2 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a solid low-budget horror flick.] (M. Johanson)