Jesus Christ watching this movie gave me the experience of what it’s like to have to hang out with me. I mean the opening credits are interspersed with images of rat skeletons that come directly from Crispin Glovers book about rats, which itself is a scrapbook remix of an old public domain rat catcher’s handbook. From one rat autist to another: game recognize game.
Crispin Glover is so great. He never belonged in the same era as MTV. He has insane actor brain, but the type that belonged to Hollywood starlets of the 1930s. He’s basically twink Brando.
This is beside the point, but if I had been on the set of Charlie’s Angels (2000) and watched Hollywood Princess and actual divine presence Drew Barrymore, meet and fall in love with insane horrible gremlin man Tom Green, ya know, I think I’d also decide to pack it up and lean even further into rat based media from there on out.
I really enjoyed watching him have a full on meltdown at an evil rat.
All the rat stuff in this is brilliant. There’s a point in this movie where he decides it’s time to take pest control seriously and this is conveyed to us by having him practice…. EXCLUSION!!!! The thing I was screaming at him to use the whole movie! Fantastic!!
It’s a movie about a young man who has the uncanny ability to empathize with rats. He also has to contend with the fact that some rats are kind and intelligent, while others have genuine evil in their hearts.
But it’s also, even more so, about a cursed house. I love this cursed house. It’s basically the one ring. Everyone who comes into contact with it desires it greatly. It corrupts their hearts and turns the natural order of things upside down. This is best shown when we see a cat, natural predator to rodents, get chased and skeletonized by a horde of rats led by their evil commander. The cat is never brought up again.
It looks great. It came out in 2003 but has that late 90s we’re-not-too-sure-how-long-this-cgi-fad-is-going-to-last quality that gives it a really timeless feeling. Which is complimented by the timeless urge to kill your boss with a one thousand rat attack.
As an exterminator, I did really feel at home watching this. The attention to detail by adding rat shit to every surface was comforting. Obviously the hero rat, Socrates, being a glossy coat white lab rat amongst the other brown and black ones was silly, and the evil rat Ben being a completely different species made me laugh too, but we don’t actually know where the rats come from, so I found myself assuming this was an escaped-from-NIMH sort of situation.
The state of the house after the rats take over was pretty spot on, too. I’ve been in those houses!
Obviously, there came a point where he didn’t want rats in his home anymore, and the steps he took were alright, but not perfect. I would have made a few stricter changes, sure. All things considered, though, if you’re dealing with a backstabbing, intelligent, supernaturally strong alpha rat who is emotionally manipulating you… I think stabbing it to death in front of its whole colony is actually pretty reasonable.
Top marks from me!