Chloe Okuno’s segment in V/H/S/94 is titled “Storm Drain.” It is a found-footage story set in the mid-1990s and follows Channel 6 news reporter Holly Marciano and her cameraman Jeff as they investigate local reports of a “Rat Man” urban legend said to live in the city’s storm drains and sewers.
Holly and Jeff enter the drain system and encounter makeshift encampments. They meet a man covered in a black, slime-like substance who mutters about the Rat Man. After he approaches them, they try to flee but are captured by a group of similarly afflicted people.
The captors take them deeper into the sewers, where they are brought before a minister (someone Holly had interviewed earlier in the segment). He announces that a new order is beginning and summons the creature: a hairless, humanoid rat-like being called Raatma.
Raatma vomits the same black liquid. The minister pours it over Jeff’s face as a test of worthiness; the substance burns and melts him to death. Holly is then presented to Raatma and screams.
The tape cuts to a later news broadcast. Holly’s co-anchor reports that she was rescued from the drain and has returned to the station (Jeff is still missing).
During her report, Holly begins involuntarily substituting the word “Raatma” into her sentences. She then vomits the black liquid onto her co-anchor’s face, melting it. As the studio falls into chaos, she calmly finishes her sign-off with “Hail Raatma.”
The segment is shot in the grainy, handheld style of a 1990s local news package that gradually collapses into raw found footage. Raatma is a practical creature effect (performed by Thiago Dos Santos), designed with input from concept artist Keith Thompson.
Okuno has said the creature was partly inspired by the Catman of Greenock urban legend and by the tragic, half-transformed imagery of The Fly. She has described Raatma as something that crossed into our world from elsewhere and is being worshiped as a god by its followers rather than being a literal deity.
The segment became one of the most talked-about pieces of V/H/S/94, with the “Hail Raatma” refrain turning into a fan meme.
