Rats (2003)

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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.

Another new-age creature feature flick with awful...better make that...REALLY awful computer-engineered effects, lousy acting performances and an ultra-thin storyline. Hungry and overly aggressive rats are once again revolting against the bastard doctor who performed scientific experiments on them and all this is taking place at Brookdale; institute for juvenile delinquents, drug addicts and suicidal teenagers. The funky red-eyed rodents are commanded by a ridiculously fake mega-rat and, for some reason, the institute's nerdy janitor can communicate with them. There aren't many aspects in the script that make much sense, like we're supposed to believe that two teenagers are capable to go undercover in the US' most heavily secured rehab facility. The film is also remarkably boring despite endless cargoes of silly-looking rats and irritating teenagers getting eaten. Of all the crappy, exaggeratedly computerized angry-animals movies that came out since the new millennium (and the list is really endless) "Rats" surely is one of THE crappiest. Director Tibor Takács scored a few hits in the late 1980's, like "The Gate" and a personal favorite of mine called "I, Madman" but he should consider a slight career change now. This was just irredeemably bad.

Or something to that effect, it's hard to tell, is this a movie about a reporter? a mad scientist? a criminal coverup? do we care? after some really bad CGI, most likely no. the star's a cutie, and she oughta smack her agent for getting her into this turkey. wasn't there a revival of Plan Nine from Outer Space she could have gotten a part in instead? avoid it like the plague and go rent Rats, starring Madchen Amick, a much better rat movie, or wait until Willard is out on DVD.