Rats (2003)

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Gutsy reporter Jennifer (a winningly spunky performance by fetching blonde Sarah Downing) poses as the troubled Samantha so she can be admitted into the mysterious sanitarium Brookdale Institute in order to research a possible expose on the place. Jennifer uncovers more than she bargained for when she discovers that the joint is infested by lethal carnivorous mutant rats. Director Tibor Takacs, working from an engrossing script by Adam Gierasch and Jace Anderson, does a sound job of creating a suitably creepy'n'claustrophobic atmosphere, stages the rat attack sequences with a reasonable amount of flair, maintains a steady pace throughout, and further spices things up with a nice smattering of grisly splatter. The mental patients are a colorfully freaky bunch: Bailey Chase as the amiable Johnny Falls, Eileen Grubba as the scrappy, belligerent Rose, Patrick Dreikauss as the twitchy Morgan, Desislava Tenekedjieva as the fragile, suicidal Cypress, and Tarri Markell as spiky junkie Naomi. The rest of the cast are likewise fine in their roles, with especially praiseworthy work from Ron Perlman as humane psychiatrist Dr. William Winslow, Michael Zeliniker as oddball custodian Ernst, Denise Dowse as no-nonsense head nurse Matilda, Sean Cullen as Jennifer's concerned fellow reporter boyfriend Michael, and Michael Hagerty as likable orderly Lenny. Barry Gravelle's polished, shadowy cinematography does the trick. Guy Zerafa's shivery score hits the shuddery spot. While the rats with their glowing red eyes and insatiable flesh-eating appetites are pretty unnerving, the main giant rodent alas proves to be a total washout due to extremely poor and unconvincing CGI effects. That criticism aside, this movie overall sizes up as a nifty little fright feature.

My friend and I picked up Killer Rats from the bargain bin in the hopes that it would be one of my favorite kind of movies: the so-bad-that-it's-good trash fest. Unfortunately, Killer Rats entirely fails to deliver. It's bad, but not bad enough to laugh at, and ends up coming off as just boring.Let's start with what the movie does right. The acting, sets, and special effects in Killer Rats are surprisingly good for a movie of its caliber. Don't get me wrong, they're all pretty lame, but they're a few steps up from rock bottom. This is about the best compliment I could give the movie. Ironically, this makes the movie less entertaining; the production values never quite reach the "laughably bad" level - instead they hover somewhere between "mediocre" and "lame." Killer Rats does a whole lot of things wrong. The biggest problem is that it's just really boring. Every time it looks like a plot is about to develop, it stalls out. The first 75 minutes of the movie are dull and plodding, and the movie never really manages to go anywhere. It's pretty much just a bunch of mundane incidents in a rehab facility with a few halfway-decent death scenes thrown in for good measure. There is never any interesting/funny/witty dialogue. The final 15 minutes get a little more interesting, but the final fight is still pretty boring.For the life of me, I can't figure out what Ron Perlman is doing in Killer Rats. I bought this movie in large part because he's in it, but the script gives him NOTHING to work with. He plays an uninteresting, buttoned-down doctor, the sort that a movie with an even lower budget might have given to a random geriatric actor. I kept expecting him to relive some old war memories or become a badass, but he never did. At one point it looks like there is some tension developing in his character, but then it goes nowhere. If you see this movie hoping to get some cheesy-yet-satisfying Ron Perlman action, you WILL be disappointed.The Bottom Line: Killer Rats is not anywhere near good enough to stand on its own merits, and never gets truly bad enough for the so-bad-that-it's-good vibe. Boring, not worth seeing.

A bunch of scary glowing rats go out for some food and terrorise a nearby mental institution. Apparently, they're so bloodthirsty because they all want to suck up to their master, a gigantic superrat who makes them perform Satanic rituals and chant Barry Manilow songs. There isn't much to say about this movie, you've seen it all before. It's mostly boredom, but there are in fact two scary moments, namely the bathtub scene where suddenly a giant CGI rat comes out of a CGI nowhere and some other rat licking up blood, which is goddamn creepy. Don't do that, rat. Generally this thing just isn't entertaining. If you want a good killer rat movie, well I can be of no assistance.

What do you expect? Sure, it's not "The Shining" for God's sake, but hey, it's decent entertainment, if you like cheap B-horror movies. If not, don't watch it, you sure won't like it. The acting is not all that bad, but the effects, like the huge rat, is really very comical. You have to realize that not a lot of money went in to making this one, and at times (most of the time) it shows. The plot of sneaking a reporter into a rehab hospital or whatever, to get a story is a little much, but the rats, hey they had a nice snack a couple of times in this one.