Friends, I love a good “bad movie.” I love crappy effects, terrible acting and shoddy production values. Some of the most entertaining movies of all time have fallen into the “bad movie” category and exhibited all the above traits. I love that there is an audience out there for middle-rung productions that create jobs for hardworking creative professionals, and long may it continue. Not everything has to be a multi-million-dollar project with big studio backing, and not everything has to be a serious, thought-provoking, or ground-breaking viewing experience. I’m perfectly happy with a silly tits-beer-and-American-flag kinda horror. But what separates many such cheap movies from the likes of Big Freaking Rat is that they are actually enjoyable to watch. Alas, this latest bad movie offering commits the worst crime of all — boring its audience.
There are so many elements here that should play to its favor. Genre icons like Dave Sheridan (Scary Movie) and Felissa Rose (the legendary Sleepaway Camp) are onboard, the budget is low, and the story is a classic monster setup. But somehow, writer/director Thomas J. Churchill drops the ball in spectacular fashion on this one. He makes his living from cheap, shoddy movies — mostly of the horror variety — very few of which get ratings higher than a 4 on IMDb, and I respect that. Good on him for living his dream of making movies. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he makes entertaining movies, as Big Freaking Rat proves.
‘Big Freaking Rat’ Fumbles a Good Premise

Big Freaking Rat is basically Piranha, except not fun or interesting (and not a single boob in sight!) A state park on a lake is due to reopen for the season, after toxic waste was dumped in the water sometime before, poisoning the land and making it uninhabitable. However, as the animated opening credits sequence shows us, there was one pesky little rat that took a good slurp of the goo, and now it has become a Big Freaking Rat. The main plot centers around Chief Brody (good one!) played by Scott C. Roe, a park ranger overseeing the reopening, while his niece interns with him and his nephew obnoxiously toys with his phone and huffs at his uncle’s frequent “kids today” rants. If this generational war between nephew and uncle were actually going somewhere, like the kid defeating the rat with his phone or something, you might justify it. However, it leads to no such conclusion, ultimately only amounting to a boring scene filler that has very little to say.
There are other park rangers, Felissa Rose being her fabulous self, and, for some reason, a weird side-plot involving a bunch of old gangsters with a traitor tied up in their basement, giving way to a not-very-amusing confusion about the “rat” they are having trouble with. Dave Sheridan comes in halfway through as exterminator Lenny, and does his best with what he’s given. He tries to pull the action in a camper direction, and the whole movie could’ve benefited from a more consistently tongue-in-cheek tone, like the Hatchet movies, or even Scary Movie. For all the fun its title is having, Big Freaking Rat is shockingly dull and unexciting, starting on an overly-long and unfunny first kill scene, and ending before the rat-splatter has had a chance to hit the ground.
‘Big Freaking Rat’ Lacks the Chaotic Carnage a Monster Movie Needs

What the movie really needs, in classic Piranha style, is the big climactic animal attack at the start of the third act. Sure, it technically has one, in which a bunch of campers are attacked by the rat, but it lacks a sense of chaos. This is the time to go all out! For buckets of blood to go flying all over the place, and rubbery arms and legs to get bitten off, like a rat version of the campfire scene in The Lost Boys. Just utter carnage. But Big Freaking Rat has no feeling of energy or mayhem that a movie of its kind so heavily relies on to get audiences on board. If you’re gonna be a silly, schlocky little creature feature, then don’t just dip your toe in the water — cannonball into it!

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As for the titular star of the movie, this is some rat. One that looks to be a good 15 feet long, but it’s hard to tell because you barely see the damn thing. There are many concessions I will make for a low-budget movie, particularly one that relies on special effects, but every other corner has clearly been cut as closely as it can be, so if there’s one thing to plow your budget into, it’s making a full rat puppet and showing it to us. But no, we see a claw here and a tail there (all very obviously manually operated), and the odd glimpse of its head, and it’s all extremely disappointing. Hell, I’d settle for actors wrestling the most obviously fake rat you ever saw over not seeing it at all.
The movie is full of inefficiencies. Characters apparently don’t know how to eat cereal, smoke cigarettes, or play guitar like normal people. Continuity is an absolute nightmare, with the layout of rooms changing from shot to shot, and peepholes in doors appearing and then disappearing. There’s frequent talk of uncles and brothers and dads and nephews, and it’s all unnecessary detail for a movie that skimps on every other element. It’s a cluttered mess of a movie that should have scaled back, stuck to the basics, and delivered what we were all hoping for: over-the-top ratty carnage. As a keeper of pet rats, I am always eager to help dispel fears and myths about them. They are sweet, loyal, and very intelligent creatures who deserve a much better reputation than they have. And even I would be game for a monster movie that makes the most of what a lot of people can’t stand about them. But this is one rat that deserves to be splat.

Big Freaking Rat

This rat fails to sink its teeth into the creature feature genre.

Release Date

October 13, 2020

Runtime

85 minutes

Director

Thomas J. Churchill

Pros & Cons

Horror icons Felissa Rose and Dave Sheridan do what they can with the material.
The title is pretty funny.

There’s a distinct lack of momentum and chaos that monster movies rely on.
The loose direction allows pointless scenes to carry on.
There’s no sense of fun or humor.