Popular reviews

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  Review by Sean Baker 6

  I realized that this was a Cosmatos that I had not seen yet. One of those 80's horror films that slipped by me back in the day.

  Got the Scream Factory Blu-ray... which looks very nice and has some good extras on it. Commentary plus 3 interviews... one with exec producer Pierre David.

  Fun allegory film that is of primary interest because is one of Peter Weller's early roles, Shannon Tweed's feature debut, Cosmatos's first US film (even though it was shot in Toronto) and supposedly Stephen King LOVES this film.

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  Review by Ian West ★★★½ 6

  George P. Cosmatos Man vs Rat jam Of Unknown Origin features some pretty dope rat POV shots and nice pre Robocop performance from Peter Weller as a corporate business guy ‘trying to score the big deal for his company so he can move his family from their huge house into an even huger house’ but a feisty rat gets involved as he becomes obsessed with trying to take this sucker out.

  There’s a scene where peter weller is in a library reading about the history of rats and then a few hours later he’s at a business dinner and recites said history. Later on in the midst of his most dangerous game with the rat—imagines said rat popping out of…

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  Review by haley ★★★

  not bad. it's worth watching once, but i don't think there's enough of a story to warrant this being a full-length film. if this had been a short, i definitely would've given it a higher rating.

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  Review by robyn ★★★★½ 5

  at one point, peter weller tries to out-bravado a rat by telling it he has smoked weed

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★ 1

  THE RAT
  Lapdog of the Devil

  pretty simple and silly man vs. beast emasculation thriller elevated by some fairly dynamic perspective/scale imagery (that make the rat not just a convincing literal, physical threat but a malevolent force of stalking/preying. great split diopters!), and a very committed peter weller performance that takes the disintegration of his yuppie professional life/psyche at the hands of an inconvenient and destructive invasion of his hand-crafted home so deadly seriously it circles back to being hilarious. (his anti-rat propaganda monologue is unreal.) i think verbinski would later do this same premise with a superior level of animated glee and craft but this is quite a bit of fun nonetheless. knows exactly where to end and looked great on a print.

  [35mm]

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  Review by Tony the Terror 666 ★★★½ 1

  With George Cosmatos…fun fact his name autocorrected to Clamato and that’s what I’m calling him from now on.

  *ahem* With George Clamato behind the wheel and Peter Weller just starving for some scenery to chew on, there’s no way this could ever be a movie I wouldn’t enjoy. Add in that it’s Shannon Tweed’s first big theatrical role and maybe the only one where she doesn’t get the Tweeds out even if she does just ooze sex appeal in a role that would have been just a mundane housewife and mother had anyone else played it. Yep, put all that together and you’ve got a winner without even having a story!

  And what story? This is literally Peter Weller vs.…

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  Review by Christian Ryan ★★½ 5

  I can only suspend disbelief so far.

  And I don’t mean Peter Weller going to war with a (sometimes) poodle-sized rat. No, I’m talking about the scene where he cheats on 25-year-old Shannon Tweed with some frumpy office girl.

  Get outta here with that nonsense.

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  Review by Ian West ★★★½

  roborat.

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  Review by Slig001 ★★★½

  I like this film but can't help but feel that it could have been so much better. The centre of it all is a man vs rat dual but the film never really delves too deep into this. Sure there's a scene that sees our hapless hero rattle off a load of unsavoury facts about rats but it would have been nice to see a bit more of a contest between the adversaries. Still, this film is generally a fun watch. It meanders a little bit but the final climatic sequence between man and rat is worth waiting for. The old but modernised house makes a good setting and also allows the film to make a mild point about the ultimate pointlessness of consumerism. Peter Weller is good in the lead, kind of James Woods-lite.

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  Review by Alan 🐳 ★★★★ 7

  A real secret banger. I saw this maybe 10 years ago, before I'd watched a million interviews with Peter Weller and discovered that he speaks like a cartoon beatnik in real life (seriously, dude sounds like Ned Flanders' dad). Watching it again, it's pretty clear that Weller was improvising the fuck out of his dialogue, cos he's just beboppin' and scattin' all over the place. It's so great.

  Your enjoyment of this movie will rest entirely on how you feel about Peter Weller, and moreover how you feel about watching him spend 100 minutes losing his shit over a giant rat that's taken over his apartment. There's an amazing scene where he goes to dinner with all of his business…

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  Review by laird ★★★★

  Does for a hardback copy of Moby Dick what The Departed did for a rat.

  I love that this feels like it's just begging for a subtextual reading, and if you pushed you could glom onto details to puruse threads on thwarted masculinity, class anxiety, and gentrification, yadda yadda... but really the office scenes/career plot are all just a silly play on the phrase "rat race" and this is just about neat macro shots of rat destruction and Weller swinging a bat around losing his marbles. Rats off to ya!

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  Review by Brian Saur ★★★★ 6

  Maybe my favorite George Cosmatos film. it's between this and COBRA. It is my dream to one day host a double feature(in a theater) of this and another favorite, DEADLY EYES(1982).