Raatma is a frightening creature who appears in a memorable segment ofV/H/S/94and a lot of thought went into the monster.V/H/S/94is the fourth installment of theV/H/Sfound footage franchise. The first film, which premiered in 2012 and helpeddefine the decade’s cult horror movie boom, features segments of horror films, directed by up-and-coming horror directors, all connected by an equally terrifying wrap-around segment.V/H/S/94follows the same format, though with the wrap-around and segments taking place in 1994.
V/H/S/94is one of thebest movies in theV/H/Sfranchisethanks to its solid lineup of segments, suitably creepy and mysterious wrap-around, and a more polished and updated look that still has a documentary feel. In the first segment of the horror anthology, “Storm Drain”, a Channel 6 News reporter from Westerville, Ohio, Holly Marciano (Anna Hopkins), and her cameraman Jeff (Christian Potenza),investigate what they think is a local legend about a “Ratman”. Expecting a fluffy news piece, what they find is much more horrifying.
How The V/H/S Series Avoided A Big Found Footage Movie Complaint
Found footage horror movies often have to grapple with one particular complaint, but the V/H/S series has found different ways to avoid that.
Raatma Is A Fabled Creature In A V/H/S/94 Segment
The Creature Is Worshiped By A Cult In The Westerville Sewers
Holly and Jeff descend into the sewer system to search for the mysterious Ratman. They find a man living down there, covered head to toe in black sludge. At first, assuming he is the Ratman, they try to give him an interview. However, the man begins spitting up black bile and chanting the name “Raatma”. Frightened, Jeff and Holly flee the sewer, only to be captured by a group of cultists, similarly covered in black goo. They are taken to a large open drain, with runes carved on it. As they continue chanting “Raatma”, the creature emerges.
“Holy Hell” (Wrap-around)
“The Subject”
“Terror”
This elongated half-rat, half-human monstrosity emerges from the sewerdragging itself along, shrieking as it does. Raatma vomits black bile which the cultists collect and pour onto Jeff. The acidic bile melts him as he screams and Raatma turns to Holly. The monster screams approvingly and prepares to vomit atop her head. “Storm Drain” cuts back to the newsroom a few days later, where it’s revealed Holly was rescued, though Jeff hasn’t been found.
As Holly gives the news, she begins replacing words with “Raatma”, much to her co-host’s confusion.
As Holly gives the news, she begins replacing words with “Raatma”, much to her co-host’s confusion. Suddenly, she vomits black bile on her co-host, melting off his face live on air and sending cameras falling and the crew fleeing. The last recording captures Holly regaining her composure, smiling sweetly, and saying, “Hail Raatma”; another cultist bound to the terrifying creature.
The Catman Of Greenock Urban Legend Partially Inspired Raatma’s Followers
A Scottish Folk Tale Has Some Similarities To Raatma
In an interview withBloody Disgusting, the segment’s director, Chloe Okuno, talked about her inspiration for the Ratman,
“In terms of the creature itself, there’s like a local legend in Scotland, I believe about a figure called the Catman, and it was this urban legend that I think I’d heard about online or on some podcasts. It was intriguing. You could find a photo of this guy who’s just covered in black grime. I thought it was so interesting and weird. I couldn’t completely rip off Catman, so somehow Ratman was born from that.”
The Catman Okuno is referring to is the Catman of Greenock, an urban legend that comes from the town west of Glasgow. According to the legend, which has been circulating since the 1970s, the Catman has skin as black as coal and eats rats with his bare hands (viaScottishDailyExpress). The legend goes on to say he was a Russian sailor whose ship docked in the harbor in 1970. He abandoned his crew due to a combination of poor mental health and infighting with his shipmates.
The Catman ended up living with a family of cats, hence his nickname, and refused anyone’s help. A gang of youths attacked him, which left him unable to walk, forcing him to limp and crawl around on his belly. Years later, the legendary man is still used to scare local children.The crawling the legend describes sounds like how Raatma movesand the pictures onBloody Disgustingand the internet of the supposed Catman do look strikingly similar to the goo-covered man Holly and Jeff meet when they first travel down to the sewer.
Raatma Is From A Different World
Keith Thompson Originally Wanted Raatma To Play A More Motherly Role
Okuno considered that Raatma may be of extraterrestrial origin. The creature’s designer, Keith Thompson, says,
“I love what she [Okuno] imagined with this idea of Raatma being something that shouldn’t be in our world. It’s found itself in our world, and it’s suffering from that, which gives this wonderful pathos to it, which is always a nice touch that I like to put in everything I do. Again, not necessarily a straightforward sympathy because sometimes things are genuinely quite horrible, and you don’t want to try and make excuses for that. But a certain type of empathy for their experience. Raatma is suffering. That’s one of the key scary things about it.”
That idea does add an extra layer of horribleness to “Storm Drain”. Not only are the people of Westerville, Ohio suffering from the presence of the creature, but the creature is suffering from its own presence on earth. It’s as if they have a mutuallyunbeneficial relationship. Many of the monsters that appear inV/H/Ssegments seem to want something or know what they’re doing. Raatma, on the other hand, does not seem happy or even accustomed to earth. It’s called out when summoned, vomits when instructed, and then is forced back into its hole.
This would make the relationship between the townspeople and Raatma even more disturbing.Thompson was even interested in pursuing a more grotesque relationship, focusing on the “Ma” aspect of “Raatma”, and turning it into a sort of mother figure that the cultists feed off like suckling baby rats,
“I thought, okay, let me pitch this because what I couldn’t help but imagine is you’re going into it assuming this encrypted assumption of rat-man in the sewer. Then the revelation would be that they’re saying ‘rat ma’ like mother. And it could have worked with the idea would be that it was black milk. At first, you think it’s sludge. It’s the sewer; it’s sludge, it’s maybe oil or something like that. Then you realize it’s milk. It’s this sort of inverted milk, this awful milk, that gets all the cult to be reborn. But that was so bonkers.”
Okuno loved the idea, but realized, practically, they only had so much time in their segment for lore. She decided to pivot to a more extraterrestrial origin, leaving its backstory a mystery,
“I’d always thought that it was something that came from another dimension and got stuck here. It wasn’t an actual God. It was just a thing that these people took it upon themselves to worship as a God.”
Movies Like Alligator And The Fly Inspired The Creature’s Design
The Creature Was Also Inspired By Optical Illusions
For the creature’s horrific design, Okuno thought about some of her favorite monster movies. Okuno referencedThe Fly,
“So yeah, we had this long discussion about different references like The Fly. I think a Puccini illustration is another thing we talked about. It was important that it looked monstrous, but you could also see how someone might mistake it for a large rat if they were seeing it in certain conditions.”
The black bile the creature vomits is certainly reminiscent of the gruesome details of David Cronenberg’s 1986body horror movie masterpiece. She also mentioned the duck-rabbit optical illusion,
“I wanted it like one of those weird photos was where you look at it; it could look like a rabbit, or it could look like a duck. You could look at this, and it could look like a rat, or it could look like this horrifying alien monster.”
As Raatma steps into the light, it is hard for the audience to fully comprehend what they’re seeing. It’s so unusual that there isn’t really a real-world analog to compare it to and ground the creature, which keeps it unreal and frightening. The man who came up with the idea for the creature in the first place, Patrick Magee, also had a film in mind when he thought up the creature,
“I love the old Alligator movie in the sewers and C.H.U.D., so it just really had that good throwback feeling.”
The crew’s deliberations were well worth it.The final design of Raatma is shocking and totally unique, even with everything that influenced it. Its design comes together perfectly, and it doesn’t feel Frankensteined together as some movie monsters can when there are too many creatives involved. Raatma looks like something from a nightmare, but also something that could conceivably exist.
A Fan Theory States That The Amateur Ratman Drawing Is A Reference To The Crichton Leprechaun Meme
The Amateur Sketch At The Beginning Of The Segment Is A Throwaway Joke
“Storm Drain” also manages to sneak in a little wink at the audience if one fan theory is to be believed. At the beginning of the segment, a newsroom talks about the “Ratman” and produces a crudely drawn version of the creature with the caption “Amateur Sketch”.This is similar to the famous “Crichton Leprechaun Amateur Sketch”, that appeared on the news in 2006 (viaYouTube). The sketch and subsequent video sparked plenty of parodies. It’s perfectly in line withV/H/S/94’s tone to have a bit of fun before the story starts getting too bloody.
V/H/S/94
Cast
V/H/S/94 is the fourth film in the horror anthology franchise. It continues the series' found footage format with a new story surrounding a police SWAT team who discovers a cult’s collection of disturbing VHS tapes. Each tape (written and directed by different people) covers an event linked to the overarching plotline. From an incident involving a sewer cult to a terrifying science experiment that leaves a man with mechanical spider legs, the SWAT team digs deeper into the mystery, unknowingly endangering themselves with each subsequent viewing.
