Ratter (2015)★★★★☆

So, this movie is not without its problems, but…I liked it a surprising amount. I thought Ashley Benson did a great job as Emma, who goes through most of this film unaware of what’s happening around her (while the audience is placed in a voyeuristic position). And the more you see of her just going about her normal days…honestly, the scarier the film gets.

The dialogue is a bit unrealistic, and outside of Emma, there’s not a whole lot of character building (honestly, there’s not THAT much character building for Emma, either). But the situation is genuinely creepy and genuinely tense, and there’s something so realistic and disconcerting about how that all plays out.

That said, Emma has a crazy amazing apartment in New York City for a grad student! I love the staircase, and that giant (again, for an NYC apartment) kitchen! Which kind of adds to the more “unrealistic” pieces of this.

It seems this movie is based on a short film by the same filmmaker, which probably explains the pacing (a bit off, dragging at times for an 80-minute film). And may explain some of the dialogue problems (that’s what happens when you try to expand a short into a feature film, I guess?).

I don’t think it was “wrong” to extend this to a feature length film, obviously, since I did mostly enjoy it (for some meaning of the word “enjoy” anyway), but if the dialogue and pacing were better…and the ending were a LOT better (it really kind of fell apart for the last ten minutes, but I’d already enjoyed the previous 70 or so!)…I think I could have loved it.

I did like the ending credits, though. It reminded me (kind of spoiler alert??) of the credits for The Rental!