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Bart, a high-flying businessman, is offered a lucrative
contract to work on. He has everything a family man could
wish for: a beautiful wife, a young son, and a personally
designed modern apartment in a Brownstone building. Things
start to go awry when the dishwasher floods the kitchen. The
maintenance man informs Bart that a pipe has been chewed through,
probably by a rat. The businessman sets traps, but he soon
realises that it's not going to be that straightforward. The
rat is intelligent, watching and scheming from concealment.
The struggle soon turns into a battle of wits with no guaranteed
outcome...
When
viewing the beginning of this film it's easy to immediately
label it tired and predictable. The assumption is you're going
to have to endure the celluloid version of a Guy N. Smith-type
conveyor belt mediocrity. This is not the case at all; you
just have to realise what sort of film you're watching. Having
read James Herbert's The Rats and its successors at
a young age, I'll have to admit to expecting something similar.
However, this obviously low-budget production portrays a one-on-one
struggle of ingenuity. Initial sighs or derision at the silliness
of the plot soon turns to smiles and even chuckles as the
element of fun sucks you in.
Peter
Weller (of Robocop fame) turns in a strangely introverted
performance. As all attempts to trap or poison the rodent
bring resourceful retaliation, the Bart character becomes
physically and mentally exhausted, resulting in unhinged delusions.
At a couple of points its difficult to know what is real and
what is simply a figment of his fevered imagination. In fact,
the more unbalanced he becomes, the more enjoyable the watching
experience is. For example, on one occasion Bart arrives back
from work and greets the hiding rat with a "Hi darling, I'm
home." This is quite a feat because for the greater part of
the movie Weller is acting alone.
You
won't scream, you won't jump (Well, maybe when the rat surges
from the toilet), and your blood won't freeze in your veins.
This is much more of a tongue-in-cheek thriller than the horror
it alludes to. Okay, so it's not Shakespeare, but it is cheap
and cheerful fun. Watch out for the end sequence when Bart
devises a cruel weapon and effectively becomes the ex-Terminator.
Ty
Power
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