Horror Movie Review: Rottentail (2019)

Directed by Brian Skiba and adapted from the graphic novel of the same name, Rottentail is a silly, gory, colourful tale of an experiment that goes wrong. An experiment that results in a monstrous human/rabbit hybrid known as Rottentail.

Peter Cotton (Corin Nemec) has been picked on his entire life. As kid at school and as an adult at work. He is a nerdy scientist picked on by all his co-workers at the top-secret lab he works at. Experiments involving rabbits and breeding. After a mix-up involving test subjects and serums, Peter suffers a nasty bite from a mutant bunny.

At first, it’s just his personality that begins to change but while having dinner with an old friend, Anna Banana (Dominique Swain), he starts to go through physical changes. She wants to talk to him about the fact that she about to lose her grandfather’s church to televangelist Pastor Mulligan (William McNamara) but Peter is pretty distracted. His hand transforms into a grotesque claw forcing him to run out on her.

Arriving at the lab, Peter tries to find some way out of his predicament but his transformation gets worse. Resulting in him becoming foul-mouthed, buck-toothed, pooping pellets and so much more. If all of that wasn’t bad enough, the other experiments get loose and start causing chaos across the facility.

Is there any way for Peter to reverse his hideous transformation or are these mutant rabbits destined to rampage across the world?

Alongside the main story surrounding Peter, Rottentail has some subplots that see it poke fun at crooked politicians and televangelists. Subplots that tie into the history of Peter in small but significant ways. It’s just a shame that the corrupt angle of these characters is just so on the nose that it’s less of a wink to the camera and more of a beating over the head.

That these moments lack humour too, even though the film tries to make them funny, is particularly weak.

The main story though? It’s a lot of fun, made to have a comic book feel with colourful lighting, a ton of gore and plenty of slapstick. It can be crude, it can be rude, it can be very silly (a lot of the effects are intentionally bad looking) but it is an entertaining watch.