The media loves a fun rat and food story. Remember when they discovered Pizza Rat in the New York City subway system. He looked like a fun rat as he dragged a slice to his den. Pixar’s Oscar winning Ratatouille has made a generation of kids think that a rat can cook award winning French food if just given a chance. But the hard truth is that aggressive wild rats would rather eat your face than pizza or delicious creamy sauces. And if these rats have been mutated by radioactive substances, they’ll tear into the rest of your body. Night of the Rats doesn’t make the vermin cute and appealing to children. They’ve cast them as vicious and ready to conquer a small town in Tennessee.
Things are bad because there’s an illegal waste dump near the city’s nuclear power plant. The local news channel has broken the story so the media hasn’t been bribed yet. A couple of guys in hazmat suits are using Giger counters around the plant when they enter a tunnel. This turns out to be a bad idea as they get attacked by huge rats. At a nearby house a guy is preparing breakfast when his wife lets out a scream. There’s a rat in the bathtub. Her man beats it to death with a tennis racket since it’s not quite as big as the ones that devoured the hazmat guys. Turns out the guy is R.J. Dawson (Apocalypse Bigfoot‘s Paul Bilbrey), the head of the town’s health department. The mayor wants him to investigate the death of the hazmat guys since he fears the rats will jeopardize the city. Things are getting nasty as a mother and child have their faces eaten off by rats. Dawson and his scientist buddy put on their own hazmat suits hit a tunnel except this time they take guns. Will that be enough stop the radioactive mutant rats? Or will they merely uncover how many of the nasty hairless creatures are ready to rise up and dine on humanity?
Night of the Rats is a fun microbudget horror films where you don’t have to worry about any rats being abused on the set. The rats that attack look like stuffed animals although for closeups, they have working mouths. There’s also a bit of savage computer animation right before the rats spring at their victims. I’m not sure how it was made, but who wants to work with live rats? If you’re squeamish about rats, you’ll cringe seeing them gnaw on the faces of people. That special effect is effective. Matt Jaissle has fun with the minimal resources. Most importantly is he keeps the film under 70 minutes so we can enjoy the weirdness. Night of the Rats keeps the vicious rodents hungry for more than family friendly food.
The Video is 1.78:1 anamorphic. This looks fine for a microbudget horror. You can see people when they go inside the tunnel. The Audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. You’ll hear the rats creeping. There are no subtitles.
Blooper Reel (3:30) has the rat puppet work where you can see the hands. There’s also screw ups with using fireworks with the rat puppets.
Trailers (4:00) include Night of the Rats, Apocalypse Bigfoot, Lake Devil and Night of the Howling.
Wild Eye Releasing presents Night of the Rats. Directed by Matt Jaissle. Screenplay by Matt Jaissle. Starring Pual Bilbrey, Matt Hundley, Amanda Foster, Jinxx Hooks and Julia Jaynes. Running Time: 69 minutes. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: March 24, 2026.
