Night Of The Rats — Night Of The Rats( DVD)

Night Of The Rats is a zero-budget 2025 film that blends when-creatures-attack action with foaming-at-the-mouth zombie stalking. The picture has a tiny cast, only a few locations, and acting that moves between competent enough, to dull eyes/bumbling reading lines, and badly hamming it up. Though there’s a stab at foreboding to tense atmospherics, with rat attacks that move between passable( for low budget fare)  to the plain laughable. Here from Wild Eye Releasing is a DVD release of the film.

Night Of The Rats was directed by Milan, Michigan-based Matt Jaissle.  Since the early 90’s, he’s had sixteen features to his name- these take in the sleazy ‘n’ trashy SOV of The Necro Files (1997), sci-fi action thriller 300 Killers (2010), and bloody werewolf fare Night Of The Howling(2024).

After grainy footage of a nuclear plant and brooding bass-bound synth music credits. We see two white Hazmat-suited men going into a large underground tunnel carrying small tube lights. First, we get stock footage of rats running down smaller tunnels, then more teethy/vicious-looking CGI Rat footage, before we see one of the men being attacked by long furry brown masses with white tails sticking…these look (just ok) in the half light, but boy, wait until you see them in full daylight.

Anyway, next we get to meet our two leads- bearded, tubby,  thinning pony-tailed Mac( Matt Hundley) and his blond-haired & tattooed wife Julie (Julia Jaynes). He’s just woken up from a nightmare and is cooking breakfast. She just tried to take a shower and found a huge rat in it.

Anyway, it turns out Mac works for the public health department- he’s called in to see the can barely get his lines out/ greying mayor. We find out there has been a massive tonnage leak from the local nuclear plant, which has seemingly disappeared into the town's water and has been eaten by something.

From the film unfolds we get a few more amusing, if still bloody attacks, where we see our brown stuffed rat toys thrown at people. There are more visits to the same tunnel again- this time with a raggedly bearded boffin and our ponytailed hero. We get a pushy reporter turning up after a few of the attacks. And oh, fairly deep into the film, we find out that the rats are carrying a disease 200 times the strength of rabies, and if they bite humans, they turn into foaming at the mouth zombies….though not enough is done with this element.

For some unexplained reason(as it’s never indicated we’re in the future), our heroes have laser guns. And the rest of the rat attacks blend stock footage, teethy CGI, and of course, the throwing rat toy attacks with bloody gore.

The film plays at the one-hour and seven-minute mark, and in typical B-movie padding, we have a lot of overlong driving/ walking shots. Though, worse of all, we get a big chunk of scenes repeated beat-by-beat.

Night Of The Rats is mildly entertaining/engaging- and I was with it, enjoying what was on offer, that was until the chunk of scene repeats…surely they could have come up with something better to make up the time?

The only extras here are a blooper reel and trailers.

Night Of The Rats is passable ultra-low budget horror/ light action fare. Though you have to be able to roll with both the competent enough/atmospheric, and bumbling/ ridiculousness, which run through the film in equal measures,