It’s hard to describe what it was really like to be going through adolescence during the first decade of the 2000s. A multitude of cultural journeys in America intricately overlapped during a time that felt simple to those of us too young to parse the reality of the USA’s foretold doom. And to help tell the story of one mixed-up individual deep in issues they understand more than the average adult, we’re thrown into Rats! as Raphael (Luke Wilcox) is forced to work with the police against a family member. The 2000s were a wild place, and Rats! won’t let anyone forget it.
With its warpy, distorted lens fixed on emo America, it reads and understands the voided agency from institutions that pressed its stoic boot into the faces of youth early. Moments of absurdity flit by in between equally spaced charming and gross-out bits, yet the film never lingers too long in one space. It’s farcical and in every moment spinning jokes around the dire situation Raphael finds himself in but just like many of us from the mid-millenial generation, both he and the film have a well-calloused view of the world, where cracking jokes is much less about jabbing at society and more to do with concerningly well-worn defense mechanisms.
The soundtrack puts us squarely within Raphael’s headspace while effortlessly placing us in the weird world of 2007. Blood Brothers, Propaghandi, and Three One G tapes color the barren and sociologically hostile landscape of Fresno, Texas. You kinda had to be there, I guess. But Rats! doesn’t dwell on that; the film invites you to be a part of the disenfranchised by creating its own atmosphere and pulls you in with both arms to bring you there. Its diet consists of irreverent and self-deprecating humor, satirizing everything under the sun including the generations struggling to thrive underneath a yearning police state’s early chokehold in the “War on Terror” era.
Sometimes Rats! can be a little too trigger-happy on the constant jokes and button-pushing, but it wouldn’t be what it is without it. Plus, once it leaves you at the credits, you can’t help but feel some sort of defiant pride in having experienced it. The plot of Rats! is a paper-thin and simple one but becomes less important over time, making a case within itself to value things like that less and focus on the people within it that give the plot its purpose. It’s a different approach to a slice of life effort that entertains that idea of storytelling but then respectfully discards that which doesn’t fit it in real time. It is one of the more rare moments where we get to see the regular people overcome something within the film and in its structure, where nothing but more weird independent cinema can only add to the chorus.
Rats! is currently available on Digital platforms courtesy of Yellow Veil Pictures.
The plot of Rats! is a paper-thin and simple one but becomes less important over time, making a case within itself to value things like that less and focus on the people within it that give the plot its purpose. It’s a different approach to a slice of life effort that entertains that idea of storytelling but then respectfully discards that which doesn’t fit it in real time.
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GVN Rating
Anya is an avid writer on films. You can read her diary at letterboxd and words on recent releases on medium. In its off time it volunteers as a projectionist & martial arts film programmer, reads disgusting horror novels, is still trying to get a D&D group together, and spends her hard-earned rent money on tattoos and blurays.
