Food of the Gods

Having watched as many horror movies as I have, it's inevitable that I'll forget some of them from time to time, but imagine my surprise when I watched this movie today thinking it was the first time and I discovered that I saw it years ago when I was nine.  I didn't remember most of it, and I don't think I knew the name of it because we just called it the "big mouse movie" because of the creatures wreaking havoc in the climax (they're actually giant rats, but whatever, I was nine).  It was amusing watching this movie again with my refined cinematic tastes and still being able to enjoy it.

So on this small, secluded island, a mysterious ooze has appeared that causes animals who eat it to grow to gigantic proportions.  The farming couple who discover the ooze on their property want to sell it to a scientist who wants to use it to make millions, and some innocent bystanders get caught in the carnage when some giant wasps kill a man on a horseback hunt in the surrounding woods.  Soon, giant rats (or "big mice" if you prefer) are running amok, and people are trapped on the island, not sure how to escape.

It's all pretty silly, of course.  Watching the giant rats attack toy cars is fun, and I especially like how they must have run out of money for brown rats because there's inexplicably one white rat among the others who sticks out like a sore thumb.  It' also unclear why everyone on the island decides to let the "hero" take the lead, since most of his ideas are stupid and don't work, and whenever anyone asks him a valid question about one of his harebrained schemes, he doesn't bother to answer.  I dug this movie, though.  It embraced its own stupidity and tried to tell a message about how we shouldn't fuck with nature because nature will fuck back twice as hard, and that message still feels relevant today.  Sue me.  I had fun with this one.