Following a much-hyped festival run (and winning Best International Feature at Fantasia Film Festival 2024 in the process) Carl Fry and Maxwell Nalevansky's RATS! releases on VOD today via Yellow Veil Pictures, and we've got an exclusive reveal of the pitch black comedy's opening scenes.
Starring Danielle Evon Ploeger, Luke Wilcox, Darius Autry, Khali Sykes, Ariel Ash, Jacob Wysocki and Pineapple Tangoroa, RATS! is an offbeat tribute to indie cinema that's been described as having a “level of exaggerated bad taste that John Waters might admire” (as if you weren't sold already!)
In RATS!:
It’s 2007 in Pfresno, Texas. Raphael is in county jail following an arrest for graffiti. He’s a good kid. It’s just graffiti. So you can’t blame Raphael for the events that unfold after his arrest. He’s not responsible for the sting operation, Pflophaus’s new mixtape, Officer Williams and her delusional suspicions, the meth pipes, the FBI, the rich kids with nothing to lose, Mateo, Larry the pig, all the knives, the local aspiring TV newswoman, the plutonium deal gone wrong, or anyone who may or may not die due to that deal turning sour. None of it is Raphael’s fault, but it is his problem.
In a recent interview on the Knotfest blog, Nalevansky explained that the opening sequence (which we're debuting today) was based on a real moment from his own youth:
The opening sequence with Jacob Wysocki, as we said, that entire jail scene was pulled from an experience. Of course, Jacob made it his own, and much funnier, but there was this person who was incessantly like, yapping at me for three days and just sweating. From tagging the bench while I'm in there with my fingernail, bored over like a six hour period, just scraping off the paint, to the horrible roommates, you know?
If you're a recovering emo kid raised on a healthy diet of surreal Adult Swim sketches, you're gonna love RATS! Watch the opening three minutes exclusively below before finding the film on all good VOD outlets:
