I wasn't expecting much from a b-movie about killer rats when I first rented this years ago out of boredom. In fact, I only did so because Ron Perlman was in the credits, so I hoped he'd be the main character. Needless to say, I was disappointed by how cheesy (no pun intended) and boring I found this movie, even for a cheap killer animal movie.
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), apparently shares some kind of psychic link with the rodents and is secretly in league with them by feeding them human victims and cleaning up the bloody messes afterwards.
The entire cast is made up mostly of b and c-listers who can hardly act at all. Dowling is a spirited and good-looking woman, but hardly a leading lady. Ron Perlman is the only remarkable cast member, and he isn't even the main protagonist. And Ernst seems like he's based off of the title character from the movie "Willard" released the same year; only crazier.
The institution staff are either apathetic or totally incompetent. There are people disappearing left and right and they either don't notice or don't care. 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 glowing red eyes that were only off-putting at best and CGI rats that were totally obvious and poorly textured, making them look ridiculously fake, especially the big one. This greatly mitigated the movies 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.
