(Streamed via Popcornflix)
Rats is a low budget When Animals Attack flick produced by the folks at Nu Image. It was directed by Tibor Takacs, who made one of the greatest SyFy Channel movies ever made, Mansquito. Unfortunately, Rats is no Mansquito. Then again, what could be?
Ron Perlman is the only name in the cast, but with a name like Ron Perlman one name is all you need. He plays the head of the Brookdale Institute for the Criminally Insane. Sara Downing is the new inmate who comes to the institute because of her drug addiction and suicidal tendencies. Before long, she starts seeing rats everywhere, but naturally, nobody believes her. No one even notices when the rats start devouring patients left and right because one of the screwy inmates (who has a psychic link with the beasties) covers up their crimes.
Written by the team of Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch (who also wrote the Toolbox Murders remake), Rats is a weird hybrid of mental institution movie and killer rat flick. With all the scenes of patients hanging out in the day room, attending group therapy, and being scolded by nurses, it feels like One Flew Over the Rat’s Nest. Or maybe Girl, Interrupted by Rats. Or A Nightmare on Rat Street 3: Rat Warriors. Whatever the title should be, the truth is, the two elements never really gel together.
The nuthouse scenes are particularly slow moving, which only leaves us the rat attack sequences. They are frankly hit and miss. There gore quotient is low, the red-tinted Rat POV is annoying, and many of the scenes are ruined by the crummy CGI rats. The most inspired bit is the odd scene involving two exterminators who are all decked out with equipment that would made the Ghostbusters envious. Using infrared goggles, they locate scurrying rats and use large taser guns to make them explode. Too bad they get turned into Rat Chow before the scene ever has a chance to gain momentum.
AKA: Killer Rats.
I thought this film was pretty damn fun and I thought the CGI was pretty solid, also Sara is actually an undercover reporter who was trying to do a story on the Asylum, the suicidal and drug addiction stuff was just a cover.
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