Director: Zak Hilditch
Writers: Stephen King (novel), Zak Hilditch (screenplay)
Stars: Thomas Jane, Molly Parker, Dylan Schmid
1 hour, 42 minutes
Watch it on Netflix
Buy the Book at Amazon: https://amzn.to/2la2xvL
Wilfred James is in room 209 of the hotel. He listens to a noise outside the room, and then he sits down at the desk and starts writing his confession…
Credits Roll.
His wife, Arlette, inherited 100 acres and Wilfred had 80 of his own. Between the two of them, they expected to well for their son Henry James. Arlette wants to sell the farm, take the money, and move to Omaha or St. Louis. Will says “Cities are for fools.”
Will offers to buy the land from her, but she laughs at him. She offers to sell her portion of land and split the money in a divorce. Will doesn’t like that because she also wants to take James with her. Will admits that he’s come to hate her. They have numerous fights over the land and what will happen to it.
Will hatches a plan with his son, Henry. Will gives in and says he’ll give in. They’ll sell the land and move to the city. The three of them celebrate. She gets really drunk. Will and Henry sneak into her room after she passes out. She struggles, but the two of them wrestle her down and cut her throat. Afterwards, they dump her body in an old well where she’s partially eaten by rats. They drop a cow on top of her, and use that as a cover as to why they had to fill in the well. Good thinking!
They pack up as much of her stuff as she could carry in a suitcase and the story is she left them and walked off. The next day, the buyer’s lawyer shows up, and Will tells him to get lost, they don’t want to sell. The sheriff comes out looking for Arlette at the lawyer’s request. He goes through the house, and he accepts their story; he doesn’t even look at the half-buried dead cow in the well. The perfect crime!
That night, they find one of their cows being chewed on by a carnivorous rat. Rats had never been a problem before he saw them on Arlette.
James come home and explains that he’s got his girlfriend pregnant. He and Will fight about it. The girl’s father wants $75 to send the daughter away to have the baby. He goes to the bank to get a loan for the money, but his son leaves. If Will goes looking for him, Henry will tell all to the police.
That night, he dreams of rats. The sheriff comes around and says Henry is suspected of robbing a store in the neighboring town. Will is bitten by a rat in the closet of the house. Months pass, and the hand gets badly infected.
There’s a good scene where he can’t start the car with only one good hand, as it’s 1922 and the crank on the Model T won’t turn with only one hand. Will starts drinking heavily and hallucinating. He falls down the steps into the basement and he sees Artlette and a bunch of rats come down the steps after him.
“She whispered secrets to me that only a dead woman could know.” She tells him how Henry and his girlfriend are out robbing banks and stealing cars. The girl is shot and dies in an abandoned farmhouse. Henry then shoots himself in grief. Rats get him before the body is found.
Will finally gets a ride to the doctor, who amputates his hand. Henry’s body comes back, and Will has to identify the body. He sees Arlette and the rats at the funeral as well. Rats are now everywhere. His house and barn are falling apart, his friend won’t buy the land when he decides to sell it, and his cow gets sick and he shoots her. Finally, he sells the farm.
He moves to Omaha and gets a factory job, but he still sees rats everywhere.
Wilf finishes his confession letter in the hotel, several years later. The door opens, and Arlette, Henry, and the dead girlfriend come in with hundreds of rats. “In the end, we all get caught,” he says.
Commentary
Thomas Jane must have taken classes at the Tom Hardy school of acting, mumble-talking through his gritted teeth to the point he’s really hard to understand. Still, he’s got the ability to be a pretty boy in one movie and a tough, scary, murderous farmer in another, so at least he’s flexible. Actually, he’s very effective in this role, and he pretty much makes the movie.
The gore shots are really good. There’s a scene where Will looks down the well and sees the body down there… with a rat inside her mouth. It’s very realistic and creepy. The movie overall is slow and builds up, but the climax is a little of a letdown. Still, I was entertained throughout, and I’d say it was a worthy hour and a half.