John Lafia may have peaked fairly early on in his career, when he co-wrote the horror greatness that is Child's Play (although we all know it was very much Don Mancini's baby), but I wasn't about to pass over the opportunity to watch a TV movie he directed that was all about a dangerous outbreak of rat attacks. Especially one with a starring role for the lovely Mädchen Amick. So I watched The Rats, and I regret nothing.
It's quite simple. Things begin with one rat biting one customer (played by Kim Poirier) in a large department store. Amick plays Susan Costello, a woman who works in the department store. It eventually becomes clear that the store may have a slight rat problem, which means getting in hunky pest control expert Jack Carver (Vincent Spano). It also means struggling to get people to believe the enormity of the problem, even after a whole load of rats push through a vent and upset lots of kids in a swimming pool.
Written by Frank Deasy, this is a film that hits all of the expected tropes you want to see from a movie with this premise. The dialogue is a bit cheesy and “on the nose” at times, but it’s also light and fun, only really becoming a bit more groan-inducing in the third act, where it slumps a bit instead of soaring.
Director Laguna does well in delivering the goods in a TV-friendly form. There are some decent set-pieces throughout, including that aforementioned swimming pool sequence, and the effects range from the impressive to the laughably bad (the worst being a rat face shown as it squeals/shrieks at a main character), but the big plus points here are the pacing and the leads, with Amick and Spano working well opposite one another.
Amick may be the person who has the rat details delivered to her in a way that informs the audience, but she is also allowed to play someone who seems far from helpless. Most of us dislike wild rats, her reaction to any encounters here show her staying calmer than I ever would, but she proves to be quite capable in helping to plan mass rodenticide, helped by her knowledge of the building (explained by knowing the place since her father worked there). Spano is a bit less watchable than Amick, but he is likeable enough in his role, manages to sound like he knows what he’s talking about, and plays the hero without being asked to overdo the full-on heroism. Daveigh Chase is a good child actor here, without being too annoying, Shawn Michael Howard helps to deal with the rats, and David Fonteno does decent work playing the kind of character who wants to keep downplaying the problem while events start to spiral out of control.
There isn’t much here that stands out, but this somehow still feels like a cut above many other TV movies, especially when we have now grown so used to the kind of fare that has populated the SyFy Channel for the past 10-20 years. Compared to many of those, this is slick and thrilling entertainment.
6/10
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