Hail Raatma: Creating the Memorable ‘V/H/S/94’ Creature from “Storm Drain” [Exclusive]

Last month brought the newest entry in the V/H/S anthology series to Shudder, marking the most critically acclaimed yet. V/H/S/94 introduced a whole new set of nightmarish horror and creatures, including fan-favorite Raatma, the unforgettable sewer-dwelling monster from Chloe Okuno’s segment “Storm Drain.”

What exactly is Raatma? How was this creature conceived and created? “Storm Drain” writer/director Chloe Okuno, creature designer Keith Thompson, and creature creator Patrick Magee answer these questions and more.

When conceiving “Storm Drain” and its creature, Okuno found inspiration from The Catman of Greenock urban legend. That’s right; a cat creature inspired the rat-like Raatma. She explains, “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.”

Once the concept and story were locked down, executive producer David Bruckner connected Okuno with Keith Thompson, the creature designer behind The Ritual and No One Gets Out Alive. Thompson was instrumental in bringing Raatma to life. “The first conversation that Keith and I had, I had some ideas, but Keith came in with an idea that was interesting and weird and creepy. It was more of a literal rat mother. He did this exciting concept art of this giant rat that let her cult followers suckle from her teat. It was extremely disturbing, and I was into it. But I told Keith when I envisioned this, the thing that was my inspiration was The Fly. Specifically, the Brundle pod moment in The Fly. There was something about the idea of this pitiful creature pulling itself along the ground,” Okuno reveals.

Thompson elaborated on that initial concept of a mothering Raatma, “What I first usually do is read the script because I’m coming into it completely blank. And then, in a way, I’m experiencing what they already have down on paper. So, they get this interesting view on what I imagined, even if it’s totally left field. One of the biggest ones was that you have this cult feeding off this black liquid that’s coming out of this thing. They keep referring it to this slurred speech of Raatma. 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. That’s a bit of an elaborate thing, even for a feature to tackle. Chloe was absolutely, immediately like, ‘That’s amazing, but we have to fit it into this.’ And so, she quickly pivoted, I think it works well,” Thompson said of the shift from Ratmom to Ratman.

Thompson added, “I love what she imagined with this idea of Ratma 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.”

Okuno gives more detail on Raatma’s background: “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. 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.

“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. Obviously, given those conversations, Keith came away with something just perfect and incredible. Patrick was the one who brought it to life.“

“All the things I’ve loved, you can just stare at the thing for as long as you want. You can have a still holding shot on it, and the design gets better and better and better. That’s always been the thing I strive for. In a way, the way I worked traditionally also helped, because I do pencil sketches initially. So, if it’s going to work, and if it’s going to evoke something for someone, they’re just looking at a linear drawing.,” Thompson explains of his approach to creating an evolving creature design. 

Raatma’s design is one thing, but creating it proved much trickier thanks to time constraints. Adding to it was that the creature’s creator, Magee, didn’t have time to execute the design or fly to set. Magee said of accepting the task, “I love the old Alligator movie in the sewers and C.H.U.D., so it just really had that good throwback feeling. And then, with Keith’s design, it was a no-brainer. The catch was, well, we shoot in three weeks. I think three weeks or 24 days. This was last year when COVID was really nuts, and they’re shooting in the east of Canada, and I’m in California.

“I talked to Chloe and told her this is what I can do, and this is what I can’t do. She had a couple of requests, but we didn’t have time. With my small crew of three or four, we scheduled every single day specifically. I had three days mapped out to sculpt the head and the body, and then, that’s it. I sent it to the director and told her to make your change right now because we got to mold it. Then we had a specific schedule for the molds, then to get the skins and paint them. We did do a mechanical head, and it came down to the minutes before we had put it in the box to ship it; I was still doing final details.“

Okuno applauds Magee’s efforts in such a short period. “It was crazy. Patrick gave us this incredible thing. He had no time to do it. He was in Los Angeles. There are all these different pieces of the suit that you operate. I think that he had gotten on a Zoom call with these special effects makeup people we had locally in Toronto and walked them through the process. We tried it on the performer, Thiago Dos Santos, the night before we shot, which I felt was important because I had this nightmare of us getting the set, and it just like not working for whatever reason. But it worked amazing. The team that was operating the creature did such a great job.”

Okuno credits Magee for pointers on how to direct Dos Santos and the effects team on bringing Raatma to life and how remarkable his work was given the obstacles. For his part, Magee gives appreciation to another unsung component of monster making: “The other element that goes hand in hand with making it believable is the sound design, and that was gratifying. I mean, the sound that they gave was cool, too. As an effects person, you cross your fingers because the sound can take you out of it. Suppose they screw up how the monster sounds; it takes away from the effects you’re doing, the sculpture and the art and the visual of it all. But it sounded cool, so it just added to it.”

Magee’s work also wraps up the segment, with the gloriously grotesque face-melting, and the vampire work in Ryan Prows‘ segment, “Terror.”

It took a cult of talented filmmakers, artists, and crew to bring Raatma into our world, an impressive feat given the production constraints. The result quickly made Raatma one of the most buzzed about movie monsters. Hail Raatma. And watch V/H/S/94 on Shudder now!