In yesterday’s post, I raved about the macabre brilliance of the Stephen King adaptation 1922, but I have to admit: it is not even the most frightful rat-related work currently streaming on Netflix. This other endeavor just might be the most unnerving film I’ve ever seen (I can’t remember ever cringing and exclaiming in horror so many times in one viewing). What makes the film that much more difficult to endure is that it’s not even fictional. I’m talking about the 2016 Morgan Spurlock documentary Rats (inspired by the Robert Sullivan book of the same title).

Appropriately enough, the documentary opens in the “ratropolis” of New York City. As someone who used to live and work in Manhattan, I know there’s a tendency to try to ignore the omnipresence of rats, but this film graphically undermines such willful blindness. Again and again, the surreptitious scourge is shown surfacing on food runs, finding a bountiful harvest in curbside garbage bags (one man’s trash is many rats’ treasure). Spurlock reminds us that there’s a biting nightmare lurking just underfoot in the City’s sewer drains, and it is a lot nastier than Pennywise.

From New York, the filmmakers venture down to post-Katrina New Orleans to follow the efforts of a research team at Tulane to track the various diseases carried by local rats.  The cut-in photos of infected humans are haunting enough alone, but viewers are also treated to nearly-unbearable scenes of rat autopsies (beware the botfly-sac extraction!).

There are unpleasant surprises aplenty, but I won’t spoil them by cataloging them all here. I’ll just say that the segment about the preparation of captured rats as Vietnamese cuisine had me ready to declare a hunger strike. And just when I thought matters couldn’t get any worse, the documentary concludes with a visit to a Hindu temple in India, where worshipers happily share space–and food and drink(!)–with thousands of venerated vermin.

I don’t want to misrepresent Rats as sensationalist, merely concerned with creating dismay or sparking disgust. The documentary ultimately aims to open eyes, not force people to avert their gazes from the screen. It was interesting to learn about the intelligence of rats, about their behavioral adaptations (outsmarting the latest attempts at extermination) and evolutionary mutations (developing resistance to the most potent poisons). Humanity appears to be making little progress in its prolonged war against these rodent opponents, and it’s not out of the realm of imagination to consider that someday the earth’s dominant species will be subterranean.

While definitely not for the squeamish, the grimly-fascinating Rats is a film well worth catching.

Writer/director Zak Hilditch’s adaptation (currently streaming on Netflix) of the Stephen King novella 1922 astounds on a host of levels. For starters, there’s stunning cinematography on display: shots of the cloud-shrouded Nebraskan plains, a labyrinthine cornfield, a looming, secluded farmhouse. While amazing to behold, the film also features plenty of horrific imagery, from vermin-swarmed church pews during a funeral service to clawed and gnawed corpses (thankfully, the rat-savaging of a cow teat–one of the most harrowing scenes I’ve ever read in a King narrative–is only briefly dramatized here).

1922 is expertly cast, with Molly Parker playing the ill-fated Arlette, and Dylan Schmid and Kaitlyn Bernard portraying the fresh-faced teens tragically turned into the “Sweetheart Bandits.” It’s Thomas Jane, though, who dominates as main character Wilfred Leland James. Countering his more heroic outings in previous King-based films (Dreamcatcher, The Mist), Jane embodies a man who exudes intensity even in his pensive moments, and radiates menace without ever having to raise his voice. Physical tics and a pronounced rural drawl do not reduce to a caricature of a country rube, but instead enrich this unprofiting character. Jane’s performance as a doomed (if not damned) wife-murderer is nothing short of award-worthy.

The film is expertly structured, starting with its use of a framing device. Viewer interest is instantly piqued as a maimed and haggard-looking Wilfred enters a rented room in the opening scene: this is someone whose fortunes no doubt have declined considerably. At strategic times throughout, the film returns to this scene of Wilfred penning his confession, and demonstrates that while the character survived the disastrous events of 1922, his psyche is not necessarily intact, and his immortal soul might be in peril. A h(a)unted man, Wilfred is progressively plagued by Lovecraftian rats in the walls that give new meaning to chewing up the scenery.

Although deliberate in its pacing, 1922 never grows tedious or tension-free. To its credit, the film takes the time to allow the unsettling aftershocks of Wilfred’s brutal crime to slowly unfold. There’s no facile reliance on jump scares or sudden, shrill sound effects. No campy mugging, either, by decomposing ghouls: the scene where a ravaged and rotten Arlette seemingly returns from the grave (in her case, a rat-infested well in the backyard where her body was hidden) and proceeds to whisper inaudibly in Wilfred’s ear proves that quiet horror can make for the loudest screams.

1922 also offers a seamless merging of genres, working both as a tale of supernatural comeuppance and as a naturalistic crime story in the vein of Frank Norris (one of King’s favorite novelists). Such duality is signaled in the naming of Wilfred’s son Henry, who insists on being called Hank following his mother’s murder (which he assisted his father in committing). “Henry James” recalls the preeminent writer of nuanced ghost stories, while “Hank James” (the handle of a soon-to-be fugitive) forms a near echo of notorious outlaw Frank James.

Hilditch’s script follows King’s source text faithfully; if there is one ostensible misstep, it comes in the film’s final moment. A whole layer of psychological complexity gets stripped away (in the novella, the bite marks covering Wilfred’s body when his corpse is found in the hotel room are notably self-inflicted), as the film instead opts for a more Creepshow-y image of impending revenant vengeance. This ultimate divergence, though, does not spoil all the fine work that has come before. In the end, 1922 stands as one of the best King adaptations ever made, and an indisputable American Gothic masterpiece.

Maybe it’s because I was less than impressed by the William Peter Blatty novel. Maybe my existing familiarity with the various notorious scenes (which have become ingrained in pop culture) doused my interest. Maybe my reticence stemmed from deep-seated dread (had all those years as a Catholic schoolboy put the fear of the Devil in me?). Maybe all–or none–of the above. For whatever reason, I had never seen The Exorcist (a film nearly as old as I am) until yesterday. Now, this may sound like heresy to many, but I have to say: I don’t see what I was missing.

The film moves at a ponderous pace, beginning with an overlong opening in northern Iraq. Ellen Burstyn–who, ironically, portrays a movie actress–overacts throughout. While I am a huge fan of legendary makeup artist Dick Smith, I found his work here to be too over the top: Linda Blair as the Pazuzu-possessed Regan looks like some eczematous Orc escaped from Middle Earth (her transformation is so extreme, it’s easy to forget the fresh-faced young girl that is being subjected to such diabolic abuse). Frustratingly, the plot defies logic: when Regan comes spider-walking down the staircase, that should be sign enough that it’s high time to give up the search for medical/psychological/ pharmacological causes and call in a Christ-loving exorcist! Incredulity (the suspension of “Dis belief”?) also arises when Regan’s head is forced to spin around 180 degrees: surely such a maneuver would have broken the girl’s neck, killing her (just as Burke was apparently dispatched by Pazuzu before being hurled through the bedroom window) and thereby putting a prompt end to the demon’s possessive shenanigans. Director William Friedkin seems to value shock over narrative sense, to the point where these periodic outbursts of outrageousness (e.g. pea-soup projectile vomiting) become almost laughable. And that’s probably my biggest issue here: the film–often touted as the scariest ever made–just didn’t seem all that frightening. I would argue that Paranormal Activity and The Last Exorcism (two modern films undoubtedly influenced by The Exorcist) work much more effectively in establishing a dread-saturated atmosphere, in making the supernatural feel like a natural threat.

I understand that it’s not really fair to judge a film from 1973 by the standards of this day and age, when obscenity/grotesquerie has become a familiar part of the pop-cultural landscape. Experiencing The Exorcist fresh in theaters four-and-a-half decades ago must have been a genuinely jarring experience. Like the best works of American Gothic horror, The Exorcist taps into the anxieties bedeviling the national psyche (as David J. Skal writes in The Monster Show: “The film became a highly publicized cultural ritual exorcising not the devil, but rather the confused parental feelings of guilt and responsibility in the Vietnam era, when–at least from a certain conservative perspective–filthy-mouthed children were taking personality-transforming drugs, violently acting out, and generally making life unpleasant for their elders.”). Yet just because the film has succeeded in touching a societal nerve does not mean that its makers pushed all the right artistic buttons along the way.