It’s 2007, and 19-year-old Raphael has just been arrested for vandalizing Pfresno’s finest public telephone. He’s let off the hook with only 50 days of community service but still has to deal with harassment from Officer Williams, the deranged, maniacal cop who arrested him. To get her off his back, he agrees to spy on his drug-dealing cousin Mateo, who Williams believes has an arsenal of nukes and plans to blow up Texas. But Raphael is no rat. And besides, he’s more focused on Bernadette, the cool emo girl he met while doing community service.

In their debut feature film, directors Maxwell Nalevansky and Carl Fry tell the story of a young Texan on a turbulent rollercoaster of misguided chaos with a contagious sense of fun, non-stop raucousness, and humour that can be described as dark, absurd, and unhinged in all the best ways. Unfolding like a live-action late-night Adult Swim cartoon and accompanied by a soundtrack that reflects the emo teen’s mid-aughts playlist (featuring songs from the likes of I Set My Friends On Fire, Thursday, and From First To Last), RATS! is the profoundly immature, incredibly crass, utterly charming nostalgia trip that will have your MySpace-era heart doing the screamo scream for days to come.