Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Swan,’ ‘The Rat Catcher’ and ‘Poison’ on Netflix, a Trio of Shorts Demonstrating Wes Anderson’s Darker Side

One of 2023’s most pleasant surprises was the revelation that Wes Anderson directed four short films based on Roald Dahl stories exclusively for Netflix. Three 17-minuters, The Swan, The Rat Catcher and Poison, dropped on the heels of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, the latter of which we reviewed on its own (not a spoiler: it’s great!), and all of which feature the likes of Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes, Rupert Friend and Benedict Cumberbatch in a variety of roles. And that leaves us to assess the previous three right here right now in this here space (not a spoiler: they’re also great!) with a level of meticulousness that will never ever match Anderson’s level of meticulousness. But hey, we can try. 

THE SWAN/THE RAT CATCHER/POISON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: First up, The Swan, which Dahl wrote based on a newspaper report from the 1940s. Rupert Friend is our narrator, standing stiffly at the edge of the frame, addressing us directly from inside a beige hedge maze lined with cattails, telling a story from his childhood. He was and still is Peter Watson, and he used to be a small boy who loved birds. Played by Asa Jennings, Young Peter manifests in the scene behind Elder Peter, as do the two bullies who tormented the boy. One of the bullies had a gun even, a rifle, and his intent that day was, per Elder Peter the Narrator, to “see what he could kill.” And that was some birds. And then, maybe Young Peter? Because they come across the boy and brandish the gun and torment him by tying him up and making him lay lengthwise between the rails of a train track, with a train coming soon. And that’s not even the worst of it. 

Next, The Rat Catcher, narrated by a newspaperman (Richard Ayoade), often standing stiffly at the edge of the frame and addressing us directly. He and a mechanic (Friend) have a problem with rats living in a local hayrick, so they call in the Rat Catcher (Ralph Fiennes), a strange, strange man who in more ways than one resembles the very things he catches. I won’t divulge all the delightful ways in which the Rat Catcher creeps the crap out of us, but suffice to say, our newspaperman and mechanic might prefer the company of the rats. 

Finally, Poison, which is in widescreen where the other two were cropped narrow. A gent named Woods (Dev Patel) pulls up to the deathly quiet of his friend Harry’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) house one evening. He walks in to find Harry flat on his back and dead still on his bed with an open book laying on his chest, hissing for Woods to remove his shoes. He has to remain as motionless as possible, for a krait slithered up on the bed and into his pajamas and is sleeping on his stomach. Now, if you don’t know what a krait is, well, it’s a striped snake native to Asia, but crucial to this tale, it’s dangerously venomous. Woods calls in Dr. Ganderbai (Ben Kingsley) to assist, and if this isn’t tense enough, poor Harry is stifling an overwhelming urge to cough. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Here we have the DEFINITIVE RANKING of Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl projects: 

5. The Swan

4. Poison

3. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

2. The Rat Catcher

1. Fantastic Mr. Fox (still the best!)

Performance Worth Watching: Fiennes’ Rat Catcher is fiendishly delightful, a bizarre, very subtly rendered character you think you want to spend more time with until you realize how truly unpleasant he is, and therefore 17 minutes is plenty. 

Memorable Dialogue: A choice exchange between the Rat Catcher and the mechanic, and keep in mind, I cannot come close to doing justice to the sly comedy in Fiennes’ line readings:

Rat Catcher: This ain’t a sewer job, is it?

Mechanic: No, it’s not a sewer job.

Rat Catcher: Tricky thing, sewer jobs.

Mechanic: Really? I shouldn’t think so.

Rat Catcher: Oh you shouldn’t, should you?

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Where Henry Sugar was charmingly optimistic, Anderson’s other three Dahl-inspired shorts are uniformly dark, leaving us with an uneasy sense of non-resolution. They’re also quite amusing, and upsetting, and imaginative, and bleak in the way they leave us a little unsettled about the state of the human condition. The Swan is a portrait of cruelty, and The Rat Catcher a portrait of madness, and Poison a portrait of madness as well, perhaps. The former is traumatic. The middle film is unsettling. The latter is unbearably suspenseful (it makes sense that it previously was adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents by the master himself). You know how Anderson tends to leaven his narratives with melancholy, as he did with Henry Sugar? That’s not present in any of these three films, so it’s a tonal departure of sorts for the filmmaker, who inflates balloons and doesn’t grant us the relief of an exhilarating pop.

But the three shorts are consistent with Henry Sugar in their winking, fanciful staging, visual cues concocted to resemble a theatrical production with moving set pieces with visible mechanisms and stagehands scurrying here and there (and, rather amusingly, Ayoade marking the passage of a day by swapping his clip-on tie for a fresh one). Fiennes occasionally turns up as Dahl himself, seated in his writing room and talking right at us, but his performance in Rat Catcher elevates it above the others, as does Anderson’s clever use of pantomime and animation. That one is the most dynamic, because you’ll laugh and laugh as a weird feeling of disquiet settles in your stomach. Those not realizing Dahl was capable of such crepuscular storytelling beyond the whimsy of his most popular work (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, etc.) may be a little bit surprised. Same goes for Anderson, who takes a creative step forward with what are likely to be his most overlooked works – and whose aesthetic and mannerisms, it seems, have been more informed by Dahl than we ever noticed before. 

Our Call: Once again: They’re great! STREAM ’EM. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.