Ratter (DVD)
Directed by Branden Kramer
Starring Ashley Benson, Matt McGorry, and Rebecca Naomi Jones
With new technology bringing us closer together, we rarely stop to think about just what kind of togetherness we unknowingly invite into our lives. We’ve all done the occasional Facebook stalking, and maybe even been jealous enough to read our significant other’s texts and emails. With all the information we through out there, there’s no telling who might be following us. Hacking and identity theft are real concerns, but what if someone’s sole focus became to follow our entire lives? As an average person just going about your day, how could you cope with someone trying to hijack your life?
Unfortunately, Brendan Kramer hardly delves into the more complex facets of this question. Instead, Ratter is basically just Paranormal Activity, but the ghost is a socially awkward nerd in a turtleneck. For an hour and a half, we watch through the eyes of the eponymous Ratter as his obsession grows from curious to murderous. If you want to spend a good chunk of your day watching a frustrated nerd implicitly masturbate to Ashley Benson’s feet, then Ratter is the film for you!
The sad thing is that I’m really not kidding. I, as all critics, have a tendency to be hyperbolic, but the perspective of the movie makes it more awkward than exciting. Starting up with a hack boot-up sequence that I’m sure is 100% totally factually accurate, we get right into Ratter with an image of Emma (Ashley Benson) asleep in her bed. He immediately starts digging into her life, going through her technology to find pictures, track her movements, and even learn her passwords. He begins to manipulate her life to insert himself into it in a sick, constructed fantasy.
Emma is unaware of the Ratter’s machinations for the first hour or so of the film. While there’s some creep value to watching him slowly manipulate images in her life for his own delusion, it’s just kind of sad. There’ a part where she says “I wish I could hug you” to her mother, which he repeats over and over to make the saddest backbeat for the weirdest DJ remix since R. Kelly’s “Real Talk.” The antagonist isn’t some kind of mastermind, but the nerdy kid in high school that was just too depressingly creepy to be endearing.
Since Emma is oblivious for a majority of the film, most of the runtime is unbearably long takes of her sleeping, shaving her feet, and jazzercising. I think one of her pieces of tech that gets Rattered is a Microsoft Kinect, given her protracted sessions of mimed mid-living room handball and poorly choreographed impromptu dance scenes. It opens a whole world of her awkwardly flailing in her underwear. Oh joy.
An uncomfortable amount of this movie is dedicated to Ashley Benson doing shit in her skivvies. I haven’t seen her this almost naked all the time since Spring Breakers. Don’t get me wrong, as a pig man supporting the patriarchy down to the last wrinkle on my pungent nutsack, there’s nothing wrong about watching Ashley Benson parade around in a bra and panties. It just felt strangely censored. For an R rated movie, we don’t see a single stray buttcheek or errant nipple. Now let me be clear, I don’t at all need titties or butts to have a good time. What I’m saying is that for a movie so explicitly voyeuristic, it’s oddly tame. Even during the sex scene, all we see is like a back and a kneecap before the Ratter remixes the shot into a penis shriveling awkward shot of him gently cuddling with her while she sleeps. Thanks Ratter, you ruined sex with Ashley Benson. You should be ashamed.
It would be worth it for some great payoff, but nothing really happens in this movie. Since most of it is him fucking with her from the periphery, she isn’t affected by any of it until the end. Even when he’s directly altering her life, it doesn’t do anything other than kind of spook her. He deletes her messages to make her lose the chance at an internship, but this never actually comes into play. The worst thing he does is kill her cat that she’s had for like, a day, and make her boyfriend feel uncomfortable. I mean, he does some shit in the end, but it comes out of nowhere and happens all off camera. The ghost in Paranormal Activity at least evolved past moving their doors around while they slept.
It feels like an amateur found footage filmmaker somehow got a large budget. This is the kind of boring, dry, scare-free drivel that I watch a dozen times a month and forget as fast as possible. Little micro-scares pop up throughout, but none of them actually raise the tension or even make you jump. And yet, they managed to rope in the talented Benson, and the camera work is pretty good. From a production standpoint, they definitely knew what they were doing. All of the shots are in focus, dialogue clear, and lighting natural yet focused. There were definitely several people on this team that were professionals. It’s a shame that the script was so shit, because the talent of this film could have potentially made the next big found footage hit.
Instead, the plot is stretched, antagonist uncomfortable, scares mild, and action non-existent. It isn’t ugly or monotone, yet still manages to be nigh unwatchable. The dialogue is fine, and Benson is easy to watch, but the way the package is brought together is torturous. They try to make everything from the point of view of some technological device, but a lot of shots are way too fortuitous to be believable. Shot for shot, it isn’t bad, but as a package it’s impossible to recommend.
Special Features:
Even worse than the film. There are three deleted scenes, one of which seemingly takes place in a room totally new to the film. Or maybe it was just the angle. I’m not going to go through a shot-by-shot analysis to figure it out. One of the scenes is also called “Cat Disposal”, and features no disposal of cats. Total waste of time.
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Special Features
Categorized:Reviews
