Peter Weller makes enough money at his snooty office job to buy a brownstone in New York City, refurbish it, and then furbish it, all on his own. It's beautiful. It's exactly the way he wanted it, except for one thing -- a rat the size of a Scottish wildcat that drives him crazy with its catabolic antics. The reason for its existence, or even the existence itself, is a puzzle that may be called Schroedinger's rat.
The beastly thing begins by chewing through the electrical cables and ends up by making a meal of some urgent work Weller has prepared for his job. The maintenance man gives Weller the lowdown on rats. They're cannibals, they bring plague and other diseases, they attack people's genitals, and can chew through a steel I beam. Weller uses mouse traps but the rat outwits him. This rat, by the way, has the IQ of a human being but a psychopathic one.
The entire movie is a story of mano a mano combat between Weller and rat. The monster rat can drop or jump to the attack at any time, from any place. Weller is obsessed by his battle with the animal. Its noises keep him awake at night. He loses sleep and dozes off or daydreams at work, endangering his job. (His sympathetic but pragmatic boss is Lawrence Dane, who delivers a fine performance of which the film is unworthy.)
The story becomes almost tragic as Weller isolates himself from friends and colleagues who would like to help him. They do what they can even though Weller has never told them that he's having a problem with a mutant rat. He becomes Howard Hughes. He refuses to answer the door or the phone and when an empathic woman from the office shouts to him from the sidewalk, we hear only hear his voice calling down distantly from an upper story, "Leave me alone."
Weller's increasing estrangement is the best part of the film because the rest of the story is so ill handled, never missing a cliché. Thus, we hear scuttling noises in the ceiling and the camera takes the rat's point of view as it rushes through pipes and shafts. The musical score is pedestrian. Several shocking scenes presented as real are revealed as Weller's daydreams.
The scenes of man/rat combat aren't convincing because there were no CGI's yet, so all we see is Weller screaming and demolishing his house with a weird studded weapon fashioned around a baseball bat. The happy ending comes out of nowhere and leaves all sorts of plot threads dangling.
Weller's acting is up to par. His character is credible. We can easily identify with him, except for those moments when he's shrieking and being attacked by a damned rodent.
The beastly thing begins by chewing through the electrical cables and ends up by making a meal of some urgent work Weller has prepared for his job. The maintenance man gives Weller the lowdown on rats. They're cannibals, they bring plague and other diseases, they attack people's genitals, and can chew through a steel I beam. Weller uses mouse traps but the rat outwits him. This rat, by the way, has the IQ of a human being but a psychopathic one.
The entire movie is a story of mano a mano combat between Weller and rat. The monster rat can drop or jump to the attack at any time, from any place. Weller is obsessed by his battle with the animal. Its noises keep him awake at night. He loses sleep and dozes off or daydreams at work, endangering his job. (His sympathetic but pragmatic boss is Lawrence Dane, who delivers a fine performance of which the film is unworthy.)
The story becomes almost tragic as Weller isolates himself from friends and colleagues who would like to help him. They do what they can even though Weller has never told them that he's having a problem with a mutant rat. He becomes Howard Hughes. He refuses to answer the door or the phone and when an empathic woman from the office shouts to him from the sidewalk, we hear only hear his voice calling down distantly from an upper story, "Leave me alone."
Weller's increasing estrangement is the best part of the film because the rest of the story is so ill handled, never missing a cliché. Thus, we hear scuttling noises in the ceiling and the camera takes the rat's point of view as it rushes through pipes and shafts. The musical score is pedestrian. Several shocking scenes presented as real are revealed as Weller's daydreams.
The scenes of man/rat combat aren't convincing because there were no CGI's yet, so all we see is Weller screaming and demolishing his house with a weird studded weapon fashioned around a baseball bat. The happy ending comes out of nowhere and leaves all sorts of plot threads dangling.
Weller's acting is up to par. His character is credible. We can easily identify with him, except for those moments when he's shrieking and being attacked by a damned rodent.