Rodentz (2001)

A medical experiment gone awry causes a lab rat to turn homicidal, develop psychic powers and balloon to the size of a human.

 Dude, psychic human sized rats? How could I pass this up? (Science is going to doom us all...)

In a lab, a scientist works to create a serum of some type. I don't know. Doesn't matter. Anyway, after his lab tech dumps the last failed batch, it is shown going down the pipes where it eventually comes in contact with rats that were accidentally released by the same tech maybe a week ago.

I think it's implied that the mixture of serums helped to create the psychic rat, but that isn't clearly established, nor does it matter, b/c it's a psychic rat. 

Our first human victim is a whiskey drinking janitor named Douglas. He pulls out a flask and a cigar (which is a classic Douglas move, btw) and comes across the psychic rat. He goes at it with a shovel only to find a cat that was killed previously. Backing into another room, he finds at least 100 rats, who under the direction of La Rata Psychica, take him out.

A group of young adults celebrating their last final, are headed towards the rat den to pick up Walter, the lab tech.  Unbeknownst to them and everyone else that isn't the janitor, (poor Doug), the psychic rat exists and aims to fuck shit up. Once everyone is in place the fun begins.

The rats currently in the lab were injected with a serum that seem to increase their growth. Soon they find that a rat named Brenda has grown large enough to escape from her cage [Never had a penny, never earned minimum wage...] So to sum up, now there are two rats. one psychic and the other huge. Psychic rat had the previous serum, giant rat got the new version and apparently, gigantism was a side effect. Psychic rat rules the basement. Giant rat rules the outside. 

Giant rat (left) is just a giant pissed off rat with no mercy or regard for human life. Psychic rat (right) is like the pied piper. But he's not so much psychic as he can control all the other rats around him.

This movie could have been solved quickly. Or at least the first two deaths could have been prevented. The rats in the basement were due to be incinerated. Call an exterminator and kill them. Then psychic rat has to do his own dirty work and my man Doug would have all the whiskey and titties he he desired.

They discover that the sound of the buildings alarm system can daze or be used to kill the rats and rig a mobile alarm to take them out. That doesn't work so well for the giant rat though, but they manage to take that one out with a car explosion.

Rodentz is bad, but it isn't 100% terrible. I was hoping for the one rat to rule them all, but I guess I can be okay with what I got: Two different rats, one "psychic" one giant, and both very pissed off. Except for some bad cg here and there, the rats were effectively menacing. There's just so many of them and they're all squeaking. It's really unsettling It's way longer than it needs to be, but that's kinda the nature of these films and they left the door open for a sequel.

Stray Quotage:

• I'm looking for her. Look, any rat that size that breaks out of a cage, I'm not looking for
• All i need is whiskey and a soft bosom...I ain't got the bosom, but I got the whiskey.

Fun scenes:

• One of the characters has a "what's happened so far" montage/flashback reminding us of everything that's happened thus far.
• One in which a guy tries to put on a gas mask that he was holding the entire time, only to find a rat hiding inside and gets bitten.
• The other where a guy ducks into a room and barricades it as he's yelling out how he can't get the door open because it's locked but he's really trying, while actually barricading it from the inside.

Violence? Yes
Explosions? Yes
Nudity? Brief