Film
Ratter, someone who uses a person’s various electronic devices to spy on them. An interesting premise for a film. Lead character Emma (Ashley Benson – Pixels) has just moved to New York and has started a new college. Having broken up with her boyfriend back home, she is settling in to a new apartment and the daily routine of her new life.
Ratter is presented from the viewpoint of the mysterious, unseen stalker in Emma’s life. With this being said, the style of the film does take on a sort of found footage feel. The viewer is looking at the world only through the various cameras integrated into the various devices that Emma has in her apartment or that she carries with her.
With much potential to the story, unfortunately Ratter falls short of this. Even though the film has a rather short running time, we spend most of the film watching Emma go about various trivial tasks in her apartment. She cooks, shaves her legs, has some time to relieve her sexual needs, plays a sports game on a consol. All the while talking on her phone, or via Skype. While we are privy to all these acts, the film does shy away from anything too detailed in these scenes.
Eventually, Emma meets a guy at college, moving the story along so that we are not just watching her alone anymore, but having a chance to interact. This does, however, anger her stalker, driving things to become a little more threatening and serious.
Ratter has very little substance to it’s story. We get to watch a young girl at home, and eventually something will happen to her. There is no building of tension, no mystery, nothing. Just pure voyeur, and it is that fact that will likely drive audiences to give this disc a miss. Watch if you’re bored, else rather look for something else.
Disc
Technically, the disc is of a high quality, and does one thing, and that is to show a film. Be aware of the styling of the film, as this does affect sound and image.
Ratter is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
Video is encoded at a high average bitrate. There are no technical artefacts or issues visible that have been caused by a lower quality disc image, however, due to the nature, theme and style of the film, there is very little colour match or balance between scenes or camera angles. There are artefacts introduced to the picture, but these are creative choices.
Audio
Audio is presented in a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, with clear dialogue via the centre channel. Due to the style and format of this film, most of the sound is presented via the centre channel, with very little on the left / right and surround channels. Fitting in with the theme of spying via Emma’s various electronic gadgets, this does help the feeling of being a voyeur into her life.
Audio is encoded at a high average bitrate, so while the film doesn’t push the other channels, other than centre, the sound is clear.
Navigation
Navigation is simple, and easy to use. The main menu screen is a static background photo, with some ominous looping music.
There is a sub-menu for the special features, that includes a link to the three deleted scenes and a link to play the previews again.
The scene selections sub-menus present a few pages with four numbered thumbnails per page. There is no description, so picking the exact part of the film you are looking for might take some guess work.
Bonus Features
Bonus features include a few deleted scenes, showing Ashley Benson, as Emma.
There are also a few trailers for Home Invasion, The Perfect Guy, The Final Girls and Insidious Chapter 3.
