- Directed by Richard Burgin
- Written by Richard Burgin
- Stars Dylan LaRay, Lynn Lowry, Jess Paul
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes
- More info: https://www.facebook.com/fangmovie
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s a slow-moving story with low-key horror, but its excellent direction and strong acting make it worthwhile. Sometimes real life is horrible, and then it gets worse.
Synopsis (w/spoilers)
Billy draws in his sketchbook. He stops to take a pill. He goes out, passing his mother, asleep on the couch with puke on the floor next to her. Later, he pokes a dead rat with a stick on the way home from work. When he gets home, what we assume is his meth-head mother is on the floor tripping on something, so he calls an ambulance.
The doctor reveals to us that Gina’s not on drugs; she has end-stage Parkinson’s. The doctor says she needs 24/7 care, but Mom’s insurance won’t cover that. We see that Billy’s been taking mom’s Valium to cope. He has a hard time cashing his paycheck, and his boss lectures him about being a quitter (Billy never goes to a real bank).
Billy meets Myra, Gina’s new caregiver. He obsesses over the dead rat. Myra likes Billy’s drawings, and he narrates the backstory of the drawings— it’s quite involved, and she seems fascinated. There is a lot of drama and conflict between Billy and his ailing mother, who sometimes mistakes Billy for Billy’s father – which makes for one really uncomfortable scene in particular.
That night, Billy is bitten by a rat, and he cries like a baby. They give him a tetanus shot at the hospital, knocking him out. When he wakes up, Myra is there to take him home, but he doesn’t really want to go home again.
As Billy upgrades from Valium to OxyContin, he notices a big itchy bump on his arm and has started having twitches and the shakes. He sees fur growing in the wound, but the next day, the fur isn’t there; Myra thinks he may be imagining things. Considering he’s mixing alcohol and OxyContin, that doesn’t seem far-fetched.
Before long, Billy starts hallucinating a man with a rat’s head. He imagines the rat as a surgeon who says, “We need fresh meat!” He tells Myra that, more and more, he’s starting to feel like a rat.
Billy goes to the hardware store and buys a set of lock picks and a big knife. Myra watches Billy throw a temper tantrum and says he needs help.
Billy hatches a plan to rob his boss. He goes over there in the daytime and lets himself in. He finds a bag full of cash in the boss’s closet. Before he gets a chance to leave, he hallucinates the Rat King again. When the boss comes home from work, Billy stabs him to death. Billy walks home, knife in hand, and stabs his mother too. Then he tears open her belly and eats her insides.
“The rats made me do it,” he says after his institutionalization.
Commentary
The story is pretty slow-moving, but it’s got excellent cinematography that helps keep it interesting. The drama about Billy not wanting to be around his dying mother is realistic and well-portrayed. As Gina, the mother, Lynn Lowry is really good here— she’s hard to watch as she degenerates in her illness. It’s a very uncomfortable film, and Dylan LaRay does really well showing us his torment.
It could stand to be a bit shorter. It’s all good, but there’s too much suffering and angst in the first hour. That’s probably my biggest complaint here— the acting is excellent, terrific even, but it’s almost painfully stretched out. The horror aspect is also pretty weak until the end, but it’s a good drama, so it’s worth watching.