Why so much hype?

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The most interesting aspect of OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN is the PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT the "intruder" has on Peter Weller's character: it's indeed Maddening to have to deal with sewer rats or river rats, some of which can get to be as big as small cats. First of all, there's the SMELL, which you can never forget; then there's the noise: the squealing and digging, which makes the skin crawl and frays the nerves (rats being Nocturnal, this goes on mostly at NIGHT); lastly (but most definitely not LEAST) is the terrifying knowledge that these animals carry Disease(s) and once came close to wiping Mankind itself from the face of the Earth (with the help of fleas). I've had to defend children in their CRIBS from rats that would swarm all over them at night and I once had to use an axe to dispatch a rat so big that it actually extricated itself from the largest rat trap on the market; its neck was broken, but it nonetheless tried to attack me as I approached, axe in hand. Its equilibrium was off, so it simply spun in the air (spraying blood everywhere), but it was still big enough and strong enough to jump six feet straight up. A buddy of mine sat with me one night and, when he saw the size of the rats I was dealing with, exclaimed, "God D---!" And this was a guy who used to have two large rats as pets... Should some enterprising filmmaker undertake a third version of WILLARD, I heartily recommend they use no cgi: the Real Thing is MORE than scary enough.

I could try to say this movie is more, but my summary is very descriptive of what this movie is about. A man is having a rodent problem, well rodent problem would indicate that there is more than one. No, in fact this guy is having a rat problem, one rat going solo. This rat is very persistent and knows how to get under the guy in this movie's skin. The guy in question is played by Peter Weller and thanks to his presence in this movie I gave this film a higher score than I may have done with an unknown actor. The rat is a pain though as it avoids all the traps and other little things the guy does to get rid of his one rat problem. There is not much gore or death in this movie so it is kind of reserved. There is one seen that sort of features something bizarre and it turns out to be a dream sequence which leads to yet another confrontation with the guy and the super rat. The movie is rather bland though, thankfully the presence of Peter Weller brings this one up a notch.

It's (future) Robocop VS. Rodent in this interesting & compelling but ultimately bland hybrid between an ordinary creature feature and a portrait of psychological downfall. Textbook 80's yuppie Bart Hughes has everything you could wish for in life. Married to the previous Playmate of the year, he owns a personally renovated brownstone in the heart of New York, his parents-in-law live all the Vermont, his secretary has a not-so-hidden crush on him and he's moments away from getting that important assignment everybody at the office was craving for. Bart's perfect universe gets brutally disturbed when an unusually intelligent rat decides to join the household and run a little bit of amok in the house. When all regular rat-catching methods like traps and poison fail, Bart begins to take the battle personal. He gradually goes berserk, isolating himself from his colleagues and neighbors, with only one mission left to live for: annihilate the rat! Okay, what we have here is an ambitious script about an alarmingly escalating obsession, a stellar performance by Peter Weller and skillful photography by René Verzier who successfully manages to depict the ordinary rat like the most fierce and petrifying monster in the universe. That's very admirable and all but, in the end, "Of Unknown Origin" only just remains a film about a guy chasing vermin through the house for nearly 90 minutes. The rodent's intellectual capacities, as wells as some of Bart's desperate measures to catch it, are just a tad bit implausible and actually on the verge of hilarious, even though the whole thing is acted with straight faces and serious undertones. What type of rat are we dealing with here, in fact? Because sometimes the animal is small enough to move through the draining pipes whereas at other times it looks big enough to pass for a warthog. Or maybe its variable sizes were intentional as part of the whole psychological aspect, and then I missed the point again? I know "Of Unknown Origin" isn't meant to be a full-blooded horror film, but still the lack of blood and action was mildly disappointing. Couldn't the rat have killed the irritating neighbor, the exterminator or even Shannon Tweed? Unquestionably the most fascinating moments of the entire film are the rat trivia Bart recites to all his clearly embarrassed colleagues & superiors during a diner party. Now that scene was both creepy and educational.

...and its still one of my favorites. The title doesn't really give an indication of what the movie is about. Tho the strangely preternatural rat co-star is indeed of 'UNKNOWN ORIGIN', it sounds more like a sci-fi title than a movie about Peter Weller being driven insane by an escalating rat problem in his house. Not just an ordinary rat problem, this rat is an advanced tactical model which manages to stay one step ahead of his human antagonist like some darkside Tom and Jerry cartoon.I even liked this better than the mother of all 'rat' movies, WILLARD. Weller can do no wrong in my book, hes consistently good and in fine 'Peter Weller' form here. Cant say I ever saw a theatrical release on this, possibly was direct to video. I have a copy somewhere that I recorded off HBO or something way back then. I didn't realize it was out on DVD, I'll have to track down a copy.