Altered Species

Well then. I just watched an crap-load of movies--all with varying degrees of quality. I wasn't too sure about which one I wanted to review first. Then it hit me like a sack-a-rats: Rodentz. Warn people about Rodentz. This monstrosity stars nobody and is painfully dull to sit through. And it's about mutant rats killing people. Yeah... real freaking' original. "Food of the Gods," or "Willard" anyone? Those were better than this, and that doesn't say much...

**POSSIBLE SPOILER**Okay here's the story: Inna laboratory the scientist and his plucky assistant are experimenting on rats and their laboratory is in a crappy neighborhood and crappy building and the plucky assistant's moronic friends show up drunk and everyone becomes food for the crazed rats and just about everybody dies and, oh yeah, there's one giant rat that looks crappy, but it gets killed, the end. There, all in once sentence! Spoiler, you say? Ppfff!! I beg to differ! The second we all realize that there's a giant rat, we all know it's gonna die eventually!!**END SPOILER**

Here's the breakdown:

The Good:

--Well, I watched it for free, but for everyone else... hmmm, no. There's nothing good here.

Didn't Hurt It, Didn't Help:

--Um... well. the gore was decent. --Very average cinematography.

--CG rats not as bad as they could've been in some shots...

The Bad:

--...and in other shots, the CG rats were pathetically cheap-looking. Look, if your film has a low budget, maybe you shouldn't rely on CG. Lesson to take to heart.

--The acting is extremely poor.

--The characters are beyond uninteresting--we have a mish-mash of clichés and none of them are even done that well.

--Booooooooooooring.

--Been done before--plenty of times.

--Stupid story, just stupid.

--Giant rat looks like fat man in poorly conceived bear costume--that was kind of funny--but not funny enough to give this film any worth.

--Retarded, unrealistic, and boring dialog.

--All the college student rat chow people are drinking Tequila from huge plastic milk jugs--and yet they don't appear to be drunk for anything longer than a few seconds. Way to stick with continuity, guys.

The Ugly:

--This film is bad. Simply terrible. Worse than you might imagine. It's not even laughably bad like, for instance, "Scarecrow" (2002) or "House of the Dead." Now those movies are crap you can enjoy. Even if they do make you stupider.

Memorable Scene:

--The lame action-movie ending, complete with uninjured heroes and explosion. Because it didn't feel at all like the rest of this monstrosity--but still sucked.

Acting: 2/10 Story: 1/10 Atmosphere: 2/10 Cinematography: 4/10 Character Development: 0/10 Special Effects/Make-up: 4/10 Nudity/Sexuality: 1/10 (I was tending to my son occasionally during the film, so I may have missed it, but was supposedly in there) Violence/Gore: 4/10 Dialogue: 2/10 Music: 1/10 (average for the time) Writing: 1/10 Direction: 2/10

Cheesiness: 7/10 Crappiness: 9/10

Overall: 1/10

Watch it only if you love rat and vermin-based horror films. Wait... Check that. Don't watch it. It's crap.

(www.ResidentHazard.com)

Despite the unorthodox script, storyline, and acting, the only real actor in the movie is Gary, played by Richard Peterson. He displays the only humor that is pretty funny. I honestly believe that if the actors were given a better script, the acting would have been much, much more believable. Allen Lee Haff wasn't bad either. He and Richard have the potential to do much deeper roles. I wouldn't be surprised if Richard becomes a big Hollywood star in the near future. I think Allen could do some Vince Vaughn- type of roles. Richard has a James Dean like aura about him when he walks across the screen. I really think that in lieu of the Director's choice of screenplays, Richard Peterson has huge big screen potential. I know that he will be in bigger roles sometime soon.

Altered Species (2001)

* (out of 4)

A professor is trying to cure cancer and of course doing experiments on rats who eventually escape and go on a killing spree. This is yet another film that deals with an animal going crazy and killing people but this one here is pretty bad from start to finish. The acting, directing and screenplay are all beyond horrid but thankfully the film gets so bad that you can't help but laugh. The director tries throwing all sorts of gore at the viewer but the killings are so bad that you can't help but laugh. We also get some nudity but not enough to keep the film moving. Go rent The Killer Shrews instead.

A must-see for horror fans. Terrifying! The rats looked real. My wife freaked out during the flick. I'm afraid to go in our basement now.

After an experimental serum is injected into common rats, they're transformed into CGI-enhanced super-rats. After shredding a cat and a janitor, they're ready for action.

Meanwhile, a group of 30-year-old "teens" are out partying on their way to a party in their party van. When they stop by the lab to visit their scientist friend, the uber-rats poop all over their party!

The fact that none of these people has any discernable IQ figures directly into their lowered chances of survival.

Rule #1 should have been: No idiots in the lab!

This is especially true since the raging rodents seem to have a particular hankering for the tender flesh of imbeciles.

The main problem with ALTERED SPECIES (aka: RODENTZ) is that in between the rat-on-human slaughter, things get very, VERY boring. The characters have far too much downtime to prove just how uninteresting they are. In spite of the addition of squirting blood and female nudity, this is a cinematic migraine.

EXTRA POINTS FOR: The giant mega-rat! He's sort of a Ratzilla or Frankenrat, and nearly saves this movie from being a complete toilet raft!...