Imagine if Downton Abbey got rabies, fell into a ditch full of expired cheese, and then was shot on a malfunctioning camcorder by a man yelling at pigeons in Staten Island. That’s The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! — a film that not only violates the sacred trust between viewer and filmmaker but actively wages psychological warfare against your attention span.
Plot: Full Moon, No Sense
Set in 1899 England, where apparently no one has heard of dental hygiene or coherent dialogue, the film centers around the Mooney family — a bunch of inbred lunatics with the subtlety of a chainsaw in a monastery. They’re all werewolves, except for daughter Diana, who returns from medical school in Scotland with a new husband and, bafflingly, hope.
Here’s the family breakdown:
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Pa Mooney, a shriveled husk of a man claiming to be 180 years old, which would make sense if cigarettes and spite were vitamins.
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Phoebe, the bitter caretaker whose entire personality is “wounded goat.”
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Monica, a rat-torturing sadist who was apparently added in reshoots to capitalize on the popularity of Willard. Nothing screams story integrity like shoehorning in animal cruelty two years after principal photography.
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Mortimer, who “handles the finances,” though what exactly they’re buying in 1899 werewolf currency remains unclear.
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Malcolm, the family’s locked-up halfwit with chicken-based companionship. A man so far removed from reality he might actually be the audience’s spiritual stand-in.
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And of course Diana, who we’re told is different, which means she speaks in semi-complete sentences and doesn’t actively mutilate pets.
The actual plot — and I use that term loosely, like duct tape on a sinking ship — revolves around Diana’s return and her role in “curing” the werewolf gene. Spoiler alert: this all goes nowhere meaningful. It’s like being promised a gourmet meal and getting a plate of wet newspaper with ketchup scribbles spelling “twist ending.”
Performances: Dreadful Moon Rising
Hope Stansbury as Monica gives us the kind of performance that makes you wonder if she was being blackmailed with embarrassing Polaroids. Her character spends most of the film screeching about her rats like she’s auditioning for a rodent-themed one-woman show at a mental institution.
Jackie Skarvellis (Diana) is the “normal” one, which in this family means she only pretends to act. Her big secret is supposed to be shocking, but by the time it’s revealed, your brain has already filed for divorce from your body.
The rest of the cast acts like they’re being paid in stale scones and emotional trauma. Every line reading is either whispered like a haunted librarian or screamed like a toddler with a stubbed toe and a megaphone.
Direction: Andy Milligan’s Fever Dream
Andy Milligan, the writer, director, editor, and all-around cinematic war criminal here, was a one-man wrecking crew of storytelling. He also appears in the film under multiple aliases, possibly because even he was too embarrassed to own this fully.
He adds in rat-torture footage two years later, films it on Staten Island (because nothing screams Victorian England like Staten Island), and shoots himself in to play a pawnbroker and a gunsmith, presumably because casting someone else would’ve required effort.
Milligan’s editing style feels like he fell asleep on the scissors. Cuts come out of nowhere, transitions are nonexistent, and scenes often just stop dead like someone unplugged the projector and threw it into a moat.
Cinematography and Production Design: Shot in a Foggy Fishbowl
Gerald Jackson’s cinematography answers the question, What would happen if someone used a potato to lens a period horror film? The “England” on display is laughably fake, made worse by poor lighting, zero atmosphere, and sets that look like someone robbed a Halloween store and gave up halfway through decorating.
The day-for-night shots are particularly jarring — nothing says “moonlit terror” like a sunny afternoon with a blue filter and a man in a wool cape mumbling about family curses.
Special Effects: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
The werewolf effects make Teen Wolf Too look like The Howling. Transformation sequences consist of a guy looking constipated while growing what appear to be Halloween store wigs on his face. The werewolves don’t lunge, howl, or frighten — they sort of meander, like elderly mall walkers with a mild itch.
Blood is ketchup. Screams are dubbed in from the sound of a vacuum cleaner giving up on life. And rats — poor rats — are paraded around like they owe the studio money.
Themes: Rats, Incest Vibes, and Existential Dread
At its core, The Rats Are Coming! is a film about family, identity, and the consequences of inbreeding — except it’s told with the sensitivity of a car crash at a mime convention. There’s a thick fog of misogyny, sadism, and Freudian horror smeared across the story like butter on burnt toast.
Final Verdict: A Curse Upon Your Eyeballs
The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! is not just a bad movie — it’s a cinematic cry for help. It’s what happens when a filmmaker declares war on narrative structure, logic, and decency, all while holding a roll of duct tape and yelling “Art!”
You don’t watch this movie. You survive it. Like the plague. Or a really bad Renaissance fair.
Rating: 0.5 out of 5 full moons
For the rats. They’re the only ones who didn’t deserve this.
