An old man (Alfred Rosenblatt) finds a stray kid (Cristian Suarez) on the street and takes him home to shelter him. Once he does, strange things begin to happen, as the old man's mind begins to play tricks on him and begins to be plagued by visions of rats invading his house.
RATCATCHER shows us the mental breakdown that a man goes through after his wife dies, with parallels to The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a legend which dates back to the middle ages and which describe a piper who was a rat-catcher hired to lure the rats infesting the town with his magic pipe. When the citizens refuse to pay the piper, he retaliates by luring the children away just like he did with the rats. Fairy-tales in their original form (the German ones in particular) were quite harrowing and even nightmarish. RATCATCHER could be seen as a modern fairy-tale were an old man tries to cope with the death of his wife of many years by roaming the streets and finding stray children to offer shelter, while the man is not a piper per-SE he is definitely a musician. However, his mind (and our point of view) begin to twist as he begins to hallucinate rats invading his home while the children in his home begin to disappear. His Musophobia (fear of rats) manifests even through his dreams, as he often finds them invading his bed and covering his deceased wife. Rats are often associated with decay, depression and poverty. It is possible that the old man is suffering of disassociation as he relates rats to street children. The old man perceives the rats as real and the children as separate entities, but it is perhaps possible that to him they are one and the same. In this case the pied piper has lured both rats and children away from the streets and into his home. The old man even tries to catch the rats on tape, as proof that he is not hallucinating such things. Now, the relation between rats/street-children and his wife's death is quite vague, but it is certainly interlinked. On the one hand we believe that the old man does not want to be alone, after spending decades of his life married to the same woman, his isolation and loneliness begin to crack his psyche. Perhaps in an attempt to quench his loneliness after his wife's passing, he tries to fill the void by filling his house with children, but since these are street-children, they probably raid his home by eating all his food and causing damage to the property, and so, he perceives them as an invading plague, one he invited into his home himself.
RATCATCHER is Co-Written by Simon Hacker and Written/Directed by Korean filmmaker Gil Choi who focuses in creating an eerie and ominous mood which serves to portray a man's mental breakdown with a great eye for creating nightmarish imagery, all in the service of mind-bending story-telling. Our point of view is that of the old man and like him, we are constantly at the mercy of what our eyes are shown. Is not that the old man is an unreliable narrator, but rather that he is aware (like we are) that he can't trust his senses anymore and yet he can't do nothing about it. Choi relishes toying with both he old man and his audience, expertly manipulating his and our perception through disorienting editing which feeds us visual information, only to get the rug pulled beneath our feet and make us question the reality that we are shown. The short-film skates the line between straight narrative and experimental film, this due to having a careful mixture between a narrative grounded in reality and the surreal madness that begins to invade the mind of the main character and therefore the film's linear narrative begins to bend and crack before our own eyes. Choi manages to create a very accurate portrayal of what it must be to experience one losing grasp of what's real while trying to cope with grief. RATCATCHER is not so much concerned with a deep psychological study of the old man, so much as making us experiment through his point of view the dread of slowly losing one's mind. In this regard, RATCATCHER doesn't want to explain madness, but wants you to feel it, to know what is like to slowly begin to unravel and question what's fact and what's fiction and the inevitable dread of knowing that perhaps there's nothing one can do. This is an elegantly made psychological thriller, the beautiful production design accentuates the decay which the vermin brings when placed within the old man's beautiful brownstone property and its classic architectural interiors. The rats themselves become an omen of things that we suspect will happen (perhaps the old man does the same) and still reach its inevitable conclusion. The cinematography and sound mix both elegance and dread, and the eerie shots of empty streets and cold empty spaces serve to immerse us into the deep loneliness and despair that the old man experiments. Speaking of the old man himself, Alfred Rosenblatt creates a fantastical portrayal of a man on a downward spiral and very subtly shows us the cracks on his psyche as he gives into fear and paranoia. Overall, RATCATCHER is an excellent psychological-thriller that is concerned with sharing its madness with its audience rather than being distant and judgmental of his main character.
RATCATCHER shows us the mental breakdown that a man goes through after his wife dies, with parallels to The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a legend which dates back to the middle ages and which describe a piper who was a rat-catcher hired to lure the rats infesting the town with his magic pipe. When the citizens refuse to pay the piper, he retaliates by luring the children away just like he did with the rats. Fairy-tales in their original form (the German ones in particular) were quite harrowing and even nightmarish. RATCATCHER could be seen as a modern fairy-tale were an old man tries to cope with the death of his wife of many years by roaming the streets and finding stray children to offer shelter, while the man is not a piper per-SE he is definitely a musician. However, his mind (and our point of view) begin to twist as he begins to hallucinate rats invading his home while the children in his home begin to disappear. His Musophobia (fear of rats) manifests even through his dreams, as he often finds them invading his bed and covering his deceased wife. Rats are often associated with decay, depression and poverty. It is possible that the old man is suffering of disassociation as he relates rats to street children. The old man perceives the rats as real and the children as separate entities, but it is perhaps possible that to him they are one and the same. In this case the pied piper has lured both rats and children away from the streets and into his home. The old man even tries to catch the rats on tape, as proof that he is not hallucinating such things. Now, the relation between rats/street-children and his wife's death is quite vague, but it is certainly interlinked. On the one hand we believe that the old man does not want to be alone, after spending decades of his life married to the same woman, his isolation and loneliness begin to crack his psyche. Perhaps in an attempt to quench his loneliness after his wife's passing, he tries to fill the void by filling his house with children, but since these are street-children, they probably raid his home by eating all his food and causing damage to the property, and so, he perceives them as an invading plague, one he invited into his home himself.
RATCATCHER is Co-Written by Simon Hacker and Written/Directed by Korean filmmaker Gil Choi who focuses in creating an eerie and ominous mood which serves to portray a man's mental breakdown with a great eye for creating nightmarish imagery, all in the service of mind-bending story-telling. Our point of view is that of the old man and like him, we are constantly at the mercy of what our eyes are shown. Is not that the old man is an unreliable narrator, but rather that he is aware (like we are) that he can't trust his senses anymore and yet he can't do nothing about it. Choi relishes toying with both he old man and his audience, expertly manipulating his and our perception through disorienting editing which feeds us visual information, only to get the rug pulled beneath our feet and make us question the reality that we are shown. The short-film skates the line between straight narrative and experimental film, this due to having a careful mixture between a narrative grounded in reality and the surreal madness that begins to invade the mind of the main character and therefore the film's linear narrative begins to bend and crack before our own eyes. Choi manages to create a very accurate portrayal of what it must be to experience one losing grasp of what's real while trying to cope with grief. RATCATCHER is not so much concerned with a deep psychological study of the old man, so much as making us experiment through his point of view the dread of slowly losing one's mind. In this regard, RATCATCHER doesn't want to explain madness, but wants you to feel it, to know what is like to slowly begin to unravel and question what's fact and what's fiction and the inevitable dread of knowing that perhaps there's nothing one can do. This is an elegantly made psychological thriller, the beautiful production design accentuates the decay which the vermin brings when placed within the old man's beautiful brownstone property and its classic architectural interiors. The rats themselves become an omen of things that we suspect will happen (perhaps the old man does the same) and still reach its inevitable conclusion. The cinematography and sound mix both elegance and dread, and the eerie shots of empty streets and cold empty spaces serve to immerse us into the deep loneliness and despair that the old man experiments. Speaking of the old man himself, Alfred Rosenblatt creates a fantastical portrayal of a man on a downward spiral and very subtly shows us the cracks on his psyche as he gives into fear and paranoia. Overall, RATCATCHER is an excellent psychological-thriller that is concerned with sharing its madness with its audience rather than being distant and judgmental of his main character.