Directed by Jeff Leroy
This is Rat Week day 3 and if I had a nickel for every movie title this Spooktober that shared a name with a real life illness, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. Regardless of that, Rat Scratch Fever may be the most accurate title of any movie so far. It features rats (check), they do some scratching (check), and the whole production feels like a fever dream (double check). Most of this review is going to be me trying to desperately explain what is happening and what the visual effects look like, so please, bear with me because this might sound even more convoluted than my typical reviews. Just as a brief point of comparison, some people who worked on this movie also worked on The Amazing Bulk. If that doesn’t send a shudder down your spine, then I am truly sorry that I have to introduce this all to you.
Our film starts off gloriously, with a crew of astronauts investigating a seemingly abandoned alien world. Suddenly, a mass of man-sized rats emerge from hiding in the temple-like structure and attack our astronauts, who bravely use space force zappy guns to protect themselves from the totally real human sized rats that aren’t just regular rats running through a miniature mockup of the hallway. After the sole survivor of the expedition makes it to the escape craft, her way back home is interrupted by even more rats with evil intentions. Now infected by some rat based ailment, she tries to return home to her ex-special forces boyfriend while avoiding the government/corporate groups trying to recover her before she spreads her ratness to the city of Los Angeles.
I was promising a fever dream and you’ve probably noticed that the plot doesn’t sound like a fever dream. It’s not the plot that’s the issue, it’s the special effects and shooting style used to show this plot, because Rat Scratch Fever was made on a budget of approximately $17. Shots are green screened, made with miniatures that sadly never look actual sized, and more often than not sets look like they’re being held together with duct tape and staples. I’m not down on this movie for being cheaply made, especially because there are some excellently done gore effects, because it’s clearly the work of someone who had a vision and refused to compromise the story or visuals they had planned and did them however they could. But what that means is that the visual style changes frequently and if you took a scene from the beginning, middle, and end, it looks like you’re watching 3 different movies, which is disorienting to say the least.
I could go into the plot more, go into the characters, but it kind of feels like a moot point. There is nothing I could say about Rat Scratch Fever that could do it justice. For better of for worse, watching Rat Scratch Fever is one of the most bizarre experiences I’ve had this month and it’s kind of worth watching just for that. I don’t know if I’d recommend the whole movie, there are some long segments where little happens, but even the first 30 minutes are wild. And you can watch this on Tubi or multiple YouTube channels, so there isn’t much to lose. I salute you, Jeff Leroy, you had a vision, and by god you saw it through.