Rats - Mörderische Brut

I wasn't expecting much from a b-movie about killer rats when I first watched this years ago on the sci-fi channel. I only bothered because I heard Ron Perlman was in it, so I hoped he'd be the main character. Even though he wasn't, that's the only reason I gave this one a generous 4 stars.

Tabloid reporter Samantha (Sara Dowling) goes undercover and admits herself as a patient in Brookdale, a mental institution for drug addicted rich kids and washed-up actors. Her goal is to investigate rumors of experiments conducted by Dr. Winslow (Ron Perlman), but little does she know is that Winslow's research involved experimentation on rats, resulting in them becoming vicious, mutant killers with a taste for human flesh, including a dog sized one. And the insane caretaker, Ernst (Michael Zelniker), inexplicably shares some kind of psychic link with the rodents and is secretly helping them by feeding them human victims and cleaning up the bloody messes afterwards.

The entire cast is made up mostly of unremarkable extras and c listers who can hardly act at all and just play helpless victims with minimal screentime. Ron Perlman is the most notable cast member, and this movie might have been a little better if he wasn't relegated to a supporting role where he gets killed in the third act.

The institution staff are either apathetic or totally incompetent. There are people disappearing left and right and they either don't notice or just don't give a hoot. Nobody even hears the victims screaming from inside the facility as they're eaten alive. Worst of all, Ernst drives off with an exterminator's van and impersonates Dr. Winslow right under their noses.

The effects were horrible, even for a sci-fi original b-movie. The rats were a mixture of real ones with not-so-scary glowing red eyes, and CGI rats that were so poorly rendered and textured, they looked ridiculously fake, especially the big one. This reduced much of the fear factor for me.

Overall, this was just another run-of-the-mill sci-fi original killer animal movie with nothing particularly enjoyable or worth watching twice for most monster movie fans.

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.

A reporter goes undercover in a mental hospital where locking the doors is a foreign concept, and finds the place overrun with... KILLER RATS! As well as a crazy janitor who speaks to them.

I would have preferred more real rats and models than the pathetic CGI that was on display for most of the movie, more gore would have been nice too. Ron Perlman is here, but sadly not very much.

Nothing to see here.

When i saw the Tibor Takács name on the back of the DVD for rental i hoped that this would be a really good low budget horror. It's not all that bad, but it has many flaws.

The plot is not that great or very credible to suspend your disbelief. It never really explains things that you hope there would be detailed explanations for. The bad thing that most viewers will notice however is the bad CGI effects. Most of the "rats" are CGI rats and they look very fake, similar to the earlier days of CGI in movies.

Another bad thing is the sound quality was not up to par. Sure, it's in Stereo Surround but i constantly kept needing to turn the volume up to hear half the dialogue clearly.

Overall, an average horror film worth watching one time. With a better script and bigger effects budget it could have been so much more.\

I'll give it 5 stars out of 10 for an average rating.

Rats starts out promisingly enough, with a suicidal woman being admitted to a secure institution for psychological treatment, only to discover that the staff are hiding the fact that patients are mysteriously going missing; given the title of the film, it comes as no surprise to find that killer rats are to blame for the bizarre disappearances. What does comes as a bit of a surprise, however, are quite how awful the special effects are in this film, and how much they ruin the whole experience.

Director Tibor Takacs' is best known for his 1987 teen-friendly horror The Gate, which delivered plenty of fun chills and thrills and some pretty good effects, proving that the man knew how to construct a decent film. On Rats, however, I suspect that he caught a glimpse of his digital effects mid-shoot, and, on seeing how excruciatingly poor they were, just gave up trying (either that, or The Gate was a fluke).

The barely-above-video-game quality CGI rats are so unconvincingly combined with Takacs' live footage, that I actually felt embarrassed for all those involved with the film (especially Ron Perlman)—a shame, because, had the effects been much better, this could have been quite an enjoyable piece of schlock horror: the cast don't do too badly with the hokey material, the cinematography is good, and there is a bit of welcome gore in the form of some gnawed carcasses and severed heads.

Since Rats, Tibor Takacs' has directed several other creature features (Ice Spiders, Mega Snake, Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep) all of which I have yet to check out; for his sake (and mine) I hope that the monsters in those movies are a tad more believable than his dreadfully shonky rodents.

3.5 out of 10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.