The Rats

Rating:
Summary: "Incredibly good"...
Review: ...if "incredibly good" means having a root canal treatment in your forehead.

Actually, this movie was incredibly aggravating. I mean, the opening credits don't even start out with telling you what company made the film. And I know why. Because if I made this movie, I would 1) leave the country, 2) have my hands cut from my body so I may never write a script again, or 3) kill myself. Given the movie, I would choose 2, and then 3.

Nothing conventional in the storyline. A department store finds out one of their employees was bitten by a rat and decides not to close the store for a day because that would be bad, or that letting people in to treat for rats would cause panic or hurt business. Can you imagine if these people had greater problems? "We found a cockroach. Notify the national guard." The characters consist of the already mentioned greedy corporate characters, an amazingly incompetant civil government, the animal expert, and the single parent having problems.

Plenty to laugh at in this movie. Check out how rat experts have high-tech gadgetry you'd expect to find in a special-ops team. Look at the swimming pool scene and how an army of rats storm the pool and no one - life guards, kids, and parents included - notices this until the rats have filled a third of the pool. Love how the mother simply stood at the end of the pool and screamed, "Swim!", didn't make any effort to reach out further to her own daughter or dive in and pull her child to safety. You also have to laugh at the fact that the rats weren't scary at all - they sniff at the camera out of curiousity and scurry around as if they're after small bits of crumb. Only the bad CG rats are scary.

Do not see this movie. Hey, feed it to some rats. Then it will be ironic, and kinda funny. Kinda.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best rat films
Review: A customer at a posh department store is bitten by a rat in a dressing room. As a result, the store fires its current exterminators and hires the best in the city.

But the rat is only the start. The store has a big rat problem and it seems to originate outside the store. This is further proved when one of the store managers spots a rat in her home and her daughter is attacked at a recreation center.

Slowly we follow the trail of the rats and unravel the mystery behind their origins and attacks.

Decent acting and wonderful atmospheric settings help move the story along and keep the viewer neck prickling. Actual rat attacks are slight in number as the story and settings are used to create the rising fear of the rats.

I really enjoyed this one except when "the best in the business" baited his trap before setting it for the climactic battle. His competence level had been so high throughout the movie that I found it hard to believe he would intentionally do things backwards. but other than that, this was a surprisingly well-done film.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best rat films
Review: A customer at a posh department store is bitten by a rat in a dressing room. As a result, the store fires its current exterminators and hires the best in the city.

But the rat is only the start. The store has a big rat problem and it seems to originate outside the store. This is further proved when one of the store managers spots a rat in her home and her daughter is attacked at a recreation center.

Slowly we follow the trail of the rats and unravel the mystery behind their origins and attacks.

Decent acting and wonderful atmospheric settings help move the story along and keep the viewer neck prickling. Actual rat attacks are slight in number as the story and settings are used to create the rising fear of the rats.

I really enjoyed this one except when "the best in the business" baited his trap before setting it for the climactic battle. His competence level had been so high throughout the movie that I found it hard to believe he would intentionally do things backwards. but other than that, this was a surprisingly well-done film.

Rating:
Summary: The Rats: The Return of the Verminous Fifties
Review: Do you remember the grade B monster films of the 50's? Typically the hero was a handsome scientist type who with an equally attractive scientist-girlfriend would meet and defeat a slimy and laughably cheesy monster. Along the way, of course, a number of country-bumpkin types would get gobbled up before the male and female hero leads would discover true love just about the same time as they discovered the monster's Achilles heel. Now flash forward some forty years. Romance between the leads has vanished with the female lead an often tough-talking Sigourney Weaver-type who battles a monster that in terms of special effects and computer animation is far more scary than its predecessors of the 50's. In RATS, director John Lafia has combined the best of both decades of monster making films. There is indeed a romance between the handsome male lead (Vincent Spano) and the ... divorcee (Madchen Amick) who discover their own form of ... love (remember RATS is an updated version of a 50's mentality that did not permit the leads to kiss until the last reel) while battling a massive horde of genetically enhanced superrats. A number of scenes are both amusing and horrifying at the same time. Early in the picture, a slobby landlord who likes to adopt rats suddenly sees a strange-looking addition to his heretofore friendly collection. While the audience is screaming for him to not to approach it, he cooingly sticks his finger in the rat's mouth with a predictable result. Within moments he is, of course, picked clean. Later there is a most amazing scene of rats in a pool, possibly millions of them, squiggling around in a writhing, breathing mess. Into this verminous brew, Miss Amick rather unsurprisingly tumbles. RATS catches the spirit of the long ago monster ethic that demands the viewer to shed an adult perspective and for a few brief hours remember what it was like to show one's fear of the boogeyman by laughing, without ever being sure whether the need to laugh or to gasp is the stronger.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly entertaining !
Review: Fox has released this made for TV movie into an entertaining DVD. Despite the budget, the movie looks believable. The Special effects are quite good displaying the rats stormed into children's swimming pool and on to the NY city subway train.

The story is about genetically enhanced rats that escape from abandoned midtown lab in NY city. Madchen Amick is the leading lady and Vincent Spano plays the exterminator. Madchen Amick is such a great actress, too bad now she only plays in TV movies.

The DVD itself is rather good, the picture quality is fine and the Dolby 5.0 (minus subwoofer channel) is OK as this is not a bass heavy movie anyway. Too bad the behind the scenes feature (lasts about 8 minutes) didn't show us much about the special effects and how to make Madchen Amick falls into the swimming pool full of rats.

But anyway this DVD deserved to be checked out as it is highly entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: Mutant Rats on The Rampage!
Review: I rented this on VHS while staying at a friends house (in addition to Crocodile 2: Death Swamp, that one was great, too), and thought it was one the best "creature features" I had seen in a long, long time. THE RATS should've won an award of some kind! Why? Because the storyline is very believable, the actors are Oscar worthy, the rat affects are the most realistic of any beast attack film I've yet to see, it's the best Man vs. Nature tale since ARACHNOPHOBIA, and it's even better than DEEP BLUE SEA!!!!!!!!!!!
5 STARS FOR THE RATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Everything's Better In Quebec...
Review: If you think this movie is great fun, you should see "Les Rats" when it is dubbed en francais...completely hysterical.

Rating:
Summary: Finally some rats with a bite!!!!
Review: My recent venture to the video store has me bringing home animal revenge flicks as of late for some uknown reason.But this time i came across with a well made ,fast paced,and entertaining little gem called "the rats ".To be honest i was not expecting much but when it was all over and done i enjoyed it immensely!It even does one of my ole favorite cliches ,hints at a sequel.The plot is nothing special, but what there is of a plot all fits together.Rent this little gem you will be glad you did.

Rating:
Summary: BEST "rats-infest-a-public-place-and-must-be-destroyed" DVD!
Review: Oh, wow. I saw this recently on television and watched it because I thought it would be the worst "rat movie" I've ever seen. Boy, was I wrong! The storyline seems very believable. A few years ago, a science lab made rats stronger and angrier by subjecting them to science tests. The lab shut down, leaving the rats for dead. The rats escaped their cages and infest N.Y.C. Of course, some of the rats were done with computers, but they used real ones when it counted. Rats don't scare me, but the ones in this movie did. The best scene was the pool scene when the rats swim after a bunch of kids. I had a problem with the ending. Without giving it away: she should have been dead. I HIGHLY recommend buying this DVD!

Rating:
Summary: average horror.
Review: THE RATS comes off as a pretty average horror film, with passable performances from Madchen Amick and Vincent Spano as the romantic lead couple.

Susan Costello (Madchen Amick) enlists the assistance of exterminator extraordinaire Jack Carver (Vincent Spano) when she fears that the department store for which she works may be the victim of a rat infestation. Little does she realise, that the rats are the mutant spawn of a science experiment gone wrong, and that the entire city of New York will soon be powerless to stop the invading onslaught...

Average, and quite boring, thriller. While the stunning Madchen Amick rises above the trite script by Frank Deasy, the rest of the cast is sadly left by the wayside with the most predictable "animals-gone-feral" story to come along since GHOULIES.

The cast also features acclaimed Canadian actress Sheila McCarthy, whose role is way too small for an actress of her capabilities. Also starring Daveigh Chase and David Wolos Fonteno.