My friend and I picked up Killer Rats from the bargain bin in the hopes that it would be one of my favorite kind of movies: the so-bad-that-it's-good trash fest. Unfortunately, Killer Rats entirely fails to deliver. It's bad, but not bad enough to laugh at, and ends up coming off as just boring.Let's start with what the movie does right. The acting, sets, and special effects in Killer Rats are surprisingly good for a movie of its caliber. Don't get me wrong, they're all pretty lame, but they're a few steps up from rock bottom. This is about the best compliment I could give the movie. Ironically, this makes the movie less entertaining; the production values never quite reach the "laughably bad" level - instead they hover somewhere between "mediocre" and "lame." Killer Rats does a whole lot of things wrong. The biggest problem is that it's just really boring. Every time it looks like a plot is about to develop, it stalls out. The first 75 minutes of the movie are dull and plodding, and the movie never really manages to go anywhere. It's pretty much just a bunch of mundane incidents in a rehab facility with a few halfway-decent death scenes thrown in for good measure. There is never any interesting/funny/witty dialogue. The final 15 minutes get a little more interesting, but the final fight is still pretty boring.For the life of me, I can't figure out what Ron Perlman is doing in Killer Rats. I bought this movie in large part because he's in it, but the script gives him NOTHING to work with. He plays an uninteresting, buttoned-down doctor, the sort that a movie with an even lower budget might have given to a random geriatric actor. I kept expecting him to relive some old war memories or become a badass, but he never did. At one point it looks like there is some tension developing in his character, but then it goes nowhere. If you see this movie hoping to get some cheesy-yet-satisfying Ron Perlman action, you WILL be disappointed.The Bottom Line: Killer Rats is not anywhere near good enough to stand on its own merits, and never gets truly bad enough for the so-bad-that-it's-good vibe. Boring, not worth seeing.

The old saying "the nuts are running the asylum" was true in this movie...when you replace the nuts with killer rats. The storyline is a typical b-movie but it is kind of cool and you never know, this kind of thing might actually happen. Most horror movies can never happen in reality which is why you can sit back and go "its only a movie" but when you think about it, there could be a gang of mutated rats on the loose in an insane asylum because who would ever notice? The plot is an undercover reporter is brought into the place to search for clues on the research done on rats from many years ago. Inside she meets the usual gang ofrejects, druggies and weirdos. One of whom named Cypress has the biggest nose I've ever seen. Anyway, as the reporter begins to get settled, mutant rats start devouring everyone in their sight and its up to the reporter to save the day.The rats were computer generated but I didn't find the movie too bad. Its pretty dumb but if you need to kill time, not a bad way to do it.The highlight of the film is when Jennifer tries to convince Michael that there are rats on the loose by holding up a picture Cypress drew. Michael says "This is your proof??? This is a finger-painting!"4 out of 10

'The Rats' is a pretty entertaining killer rodent movie.**SPOILERS**Teenager Samantha (Sara Downing) is admitted into Brookdale Institute, a psychiatric hospital. It has been plagued by strange disappearances nearby that the police haven't been able to solve. The head doctor at the institute, Dr. Winslow (Ron Perlman) takes an immediate interest in her, and assigns her to a controlling roommate (Eileen Grubba). At first, she really doesn't know what to expect, but she quickly makes a friend in the facility, Naomi (Tarri Markel). The next day, she is missing, and Dr. Winslow suggests a cover up among the staff. Samantha doesn't believe it, and launches a hidden investigation into Naomi's disappearance and finds that the place is infested with rats. After two more inmates are found dead, Samantha believes more than that a cover-up exists. She begins drilling the staff to do something about the rat problem, and they finally hire an exterminator, (John Paul Young) who also falls victim to the rats. After several freak-outs from the other residents, Samantha resolves herself to find out what the staff at the hospital is trying to hide. She discovers that the janitor (Michael Zelniker) of the hospital is controlling the rats telepathically as the result of an accident from an experiment Dr. Winslow had conducted before the hospital was used as a psychiatric hospital.The Good News: For once, we finally get a horror film set inside a creepy location: an insane asylum. Granted, the idea has been done before, but nit with killer rats as the culprits. This was a great idea and should've been done a lot sooner. The location allows for the usual character stereotypes in these films: the caring doctor; the clue-less staff; the heroine; and the typical first victim who knows what's really going on. I've seen so many films where they try to step away from these stereotypes that, in a small way, it's refreshing to see those brought back into a film. That was a real nice surprise to see this old cliché brought back into a modern film. Even though the rats may be fake, I was glad that the blood and gore wasn't. The blood was realistic, and we even got to see some eaten-away carcasses. There were several of those, so it wasn't just one. The mother rat was very vicious and attacked everyone in sight, just the way a killer creature should be. The best quality is that something is always happening, so it doesn't move too fast for its own good and loose you in very confusing scenes. It did keep your interest, something all good movies know how to do and do well.The Bad News: The rats are so obviously computer generated that it looses at the terror in the script. The film does have some really suspenseful moments, but the badly designed rats nearly ruin it. It damages a film when we see this really great scene where the rats overwhelm their victim, yet the person is seen to be covered in fake rats that don't match up to the on-screen mayhem. It was very frustrating to see those kinds of scenes. I was really getting into the movie and then they had to show the fake rats in a scene where they are clearly not in the same shot in the movie. That was a real killer to have to watch that kind of scene. The ending was also very confusing. It featured the same kind of ending that all these movies seem to have. If you've seen one of these kinds of movies, you'll know the ending. It wasn't a very creative ending compared to the rest of the film.The Final Verdict: Keeping in mind that the rats are so obviously fake, this is still a pretty entertaining movie. The other 'Rats,' where they take over Manhattan, was only slightly better than this one, though both are recommended to killer rodent movie fans.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, and mild violence on the rats

When i saw the Tibor Takács name on the back of the DVD for rental i hoped that this would be a really good low budget horror. It's not all that bad, but it has many flaws.The plot is not that great or very credible to suspend your disbelief. It never really explains things that you hope there would be detailed explanations for. The bad thing that most viewers will notice however is the bad CGI effects. Most of the "rats" are CGI rats and they look very fake, similar to the earlier days of CGI in movies.Another bad thing is the sound quality was not up to par. Sure, it's in Stereo Surround but i constantly kept needing to turn the volume up to hear half the dialogue clearly.Overall, an average horror film worth watching one time. With a better script and bigger effects budget it could have been so much more.\I'll give it 5 stars out of 10 for an average rating.