RATS! is one of the most aggressively original and uniquely entertaining films I have seen in a hot minute. It’s 2007, Pfresno, Texas. Community College art student Raphael (Luke Wilcox) is caught tagging an abandoned pay phone. This lands our young artist as a key player in a sting operation against his drug dealing cousin Mateo (Darius Autry). Meanwhile there is a hand-stealing slasher on the loose who is stealing hands. How will our aimless hero navigate small town life with big city issues? Written and directed by Carl Fry and Maxwell Nalevansky RATS! is cinematic graffiti. Popping with style, verve, and a unique, unbridled voice, this is sure to be one of the most unique and entertaining movies of 2025.

Officer Williams (Danielle Evon Ploeger) is the psycho cop that nabs, or rather tackles Raphael during the act of tagging. She has her own agenda. It’s Williams who pushes for Raphael to move in with his cousin Mateo. Why? Because Williams believes that Mateo is dealing drugs, guns, and weapons of mass destruction. Raphael relocates to Mateo’s place and is assigned community service. Here he meets Bernadette (Khali Sykes) and the two hit it off. Did I mention the aspiring news anchor that lives next door to Mateo? This movie is celluloid chaos folks. But it works so amazingly well.

So, Officer Williams is after Mateo, Mateo is after his squatter roommate, the FBI is after who knows who, some crazy fool is cutting off hands and Raphael and Bernadette are simply trying to exist. Their only possible out is to flee to a blackberry farm in Utah, or Idaho, or someplace.

Wilcox is a solid slacker leading man. He’s innocent, yet shifty-eyed. He and Sykes as Brittany have a great chemistry. Still, I have to just hand the movie over on a silver platter to Ploeger as Officer Williams. She gives a batshit crazy performance as the dangerously unhinged, power-hungry officer with a grudge and she steals every last frame she is in. I also have to call out Billy (Jacob Wysocki). As Raphael’s cellmate at the beginning of the film then popping up later. Wysocki has IT. He is absolutely funny as hell.

I literally laughed out loud watching RATS! Between the crazy plot, the crazier performances, and the go-for-broke direction from Fry and Nalevansky, I was mercilessly hammered with gags, silliness, and seemingly limitless energy dialed to eleven. Fry edits the pic giving it a nervous frenetic energy while Carmen Hilbert’s photography and
Dakota Millett’s art direction work to maintain the farcical tone that Fry and Nalevansky achieve.

RATS! is what it would look like if early Wes Anderson and good Warner Bros. cartoons mated in some unholy act of comedy. Everyone in the movie is some level of insane. Everything is stretched to the most extreme level. Everyone gives a special pronunciation to the word “hands.” I cackled, I rolled my eyes, and then eagerly anticipated what Carl Fry and Maxwell Nalevansky had planned next. Please guys, keep your energy up. We need this right now.