Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Based on Robert Sullivan’s bestselling book, Morgan Spurlock and his team travel around the world to bring viewers face to face with rats while delving into humans’ complicated relationship with the creepy creatures.
Morgan Spurlock's rat documentary offers some genuinely unsettling and viscerally compelling footage as the crew ventures globally to document rat infestations and the human relationship with rodents. The cinematography captures some striking and stomach-turning imagery that elevates a fairly conventional documentary structure. However, the narrative arc is episodic and loosely organized, lacking a strong throughline or memorable conclusion. As a documentary, 'acting' is not applicable in the traditional sense, and the human subjects are functional but unremarkable. The subject matter gives it a degree of novelty — rat-centric global documentaries are rare — but the execution follows fairly standard documentary conventions. The ending doesn't leave a lasting impression, failing to synthesize its global journey into a resonant takeaway.