Director: Matt Jaissle
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Nature-Run-Amok
Plot:
Living in a small town, residents find themselves under constant attack by a swarm of hyper-aggressive rats that have escaped from a testing lab after testing the effects of a new rabies virus, and must find a way of stopping the creatures from moving through the area.
Review:
Overall, this was a fairly fun cheesy genre effort. One of the better features here comes from the strong and worthwhile setup that allows this to hit the necessary points involving how the rats got aggressive and why they’re attacking others the way they are. By offering up the tell-tale explanation about the rats being the product of a government test on rabies and accidentally releasing them into a small town community, this offers up enough of a reason why the creatures are free in the area and why they’re attacking others, as everything here is handled well enough to be quite believable in something like this. The concurrent storylines built off of this, from the news reports tracking the rats’ victims across the city, the scientists looking into the rats’ disease-spreading abilities, and the various attempts by the agents to stop the rats from attacking, the whole thing comes off with enough pieces to fit together incredibly well.
With this in place, there are tons of cheesy goodness to come from the hilariously over-the-top creature attacks that deliver when necessary. The opening attacks on the town, from the creatures appearing in remote farmhouses and plumbing installations to the sewers of the city as a whole, immediately provide the kind of introductory note on their rampage across the county and the danger they generate so that it can launch into the other storylines quite easily. This is carried through the different encounters later on, as the rest of the townspeople are shown encountering the overwhelming swarm of rats and being devoured, with the cheesy effects used to show the puppet rats or badly-animated CGI versions crawling over surfaces and ripping victims apart, being immensely fun and goofy. Likewise, with the designation that there’s also a zombie outbreak caused by the creatures that provide even more low-budget cheesy gore and action, there’s quite a lot to like here.
There are a few minor drawbacks here that keep this down. The main issue here is the expected ones, in how it’s obvious that low-budget limitations are present throughout here. With the goofy rat effects being created through the use of obvious and barely hidden puppets chucked at the actors from off-screen or atrocious CGI to paint swarms of them on-screen in the big swarming scenes, there’s some objective material here to show off the kind of budget this really has. The rest of the production, from the guerrilla-style presentation and general approach here, carries that stamp quite heavily, which is a personal preference for how they want to go forth with that type of style here. As well, some of the general bits here about the government’s search for the rat cure and the responses by the local agents trying to contain everything are a bit baffling and confusing just trying to move this along, being what holds this one back overall.
Overview: ****/5
A wholly effective and likable cheesy genre effort, there’s quite a lot to like that manages to make this one of the more likable efforts in this style, as there are only a few small issues here holding it back. Those with an appreciation for this approach or who aren’t bothered by these factors will have the most to like about it, while most others might want to heed caution with this one.
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