Rattlers

Rattlers has all the indications of being a cable channel movie of the week. Tales of deadly animals are common subjects for those kinds of projects, and I have to admit that as bad as they can be I tend to enjoy them. Like so many of them Rattlers offers little that's noteworthy, yet held my interest from beginning to end.

Local desert rattlesnakes are exhibiting strange behavior. They're making unprovoked attacks in the desert. They're unnaturally aggressive and attacking in packs so large that nothing in their path has a chance to get away. They're even getting into homes to kill people.

The sheriff calls in a snake expert from the university. Tom is just as stumped as anyone, all he can say for sure is that this is NOT normal behavior. He's teamed up with a pretty photographer to head out into the desert and figure out what's going on. He traces the path of the attacks back to a nearby military base which clearly has something to hide.

There's a lot wrong with this flick. The logic of snakes getting into homes the way they do doesn't always make sense. The acting is mostly pretty weak though I started liking the main characters of Tom and Ann (after Ann gets off her women's lib soapbox that is). The snake attacks are little more than shots of snakes followed by shots of people screaming with no real interaction to sell the illusion that they are in the same place at the same time.

Yet it all comes together to some degree. The story is simple but solid, the pacing is good with the excitement of attacks mixed well with the slower scenes of investigation, and all the snake talk sounds legit enough to suspend disbelief briefly. The slow motion shots of snakes jiggling their rattles is actually interesting to watch.

MORALITY:

This is a PG movie but may be closer to PG13. There is a little bit of bloody gun violence. Lots of people get attacked by snakes. We never see the disfigured corpses, but we do get descriptions of them.

We get a quick but clear look at a naked girl as a guy reads a porno mag. The sexuality amounts to seeing a couple in bed together presumably in a state of undress.

There are a few instances of strong language.

SPIRITUALITY:

Snakes are people, too!

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Most people are going to find Rattlers a complete waste of time. I was moderately entertained so surely I can't be the only one to find it worth a few moments of time. Don't put any effort into tracking it down, though.

#Rattlers