by Pauline Adamek
Worth: $7.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Darius Autry, Khali McDuff-Sykes, Jacob Wysocki, John Ennis, Luke Wilcox, Danielle Evon Ploeger
Intro:
… an extreme gross-out stoner comedy that could have been a whole lot pfunnier…
After a brief prologue involving a bloody crime scene littered with severed hands, we meet a disaffected emo teen with artistic aspirations who kills time spraying graffiti around his backwater Texan town, Pfresno. Rafael (Luke Wilcox) ends up in an overnight drunk tank with a bunch of weirdos after getting caught tagging a public payphone. (The movie’s setting is 2007.) His penalty is community service, but his Milf mum Linda’s unhinged gung-ho cop girlfriend Officer Williams (Danielle Evon Ploeger) insists he go undercover at his sketchy cousin Mateo’s place to collect evidence of his suspected crimes. A small time dope dealer, cousin Mateo (Darius Autry) is under surveillance by the FBI who suspect he’s in possession of some nuclear weapons and planning on “blowing up Texas.”
Meanwhile, there’s still that pesky unsolved mystery of all the severed hands… For some reason, everyone pronounces “hands” as “harnz.” What unfolds is a comedy of errors underpinned by duelling criminal operations. All the town snoops seem to have psycho cop Williams on speed dial, constantly calling in tips. Voluptuous Ariel Ash as Shay Burrata (?!) has aspirations of becoming a TV newswoman, with her devoted boyfriend coaching her reporting style from behind the camera. Each of Mateo’s misfit friends and the numerous other grungy characters in this hick town are more colourful and eccentric than the last. Our emo star has great screen chemistry with Khali Sykes as Bernadette, a goth-punk woman he meets while shirking their community service.
With its bursts of frantic editing and emphatic sound effects, RATS! seems to be reaching for Scott Pilgrim vibes. Carmen Hilbert’s cinematography pops with bright comic book colours and the occasional use of elaborate CGI special effects.
Marking their debut, writer/directors Carl Fry and Maxwell Nalevansky may have won the Bronze Audience Award at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival, but this low-budget flick is mostly a mess. RATS! is an extreme gross-out stoner comedy that could have been a whole lot pfunnier… We really didn’t need to see the toilet bowl’s POV of someone taking a huge poo as well as some other real-life disturbing imagery casually playing on the TV in the background. Not for the squeamish.
