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Ratcatcher

Glasgow, 1973. The film starts with a young boy—James's friend Ryan Quinn—twirling himself in mesh curtains before his mother clouts him and readies him to visit his father. But Ryan chooses to play with James instead and runs off, with his mother unawares. Ryan meets James at the canal and drowns during some rough horseplay, at which point James runs away. No one apparently saw that James had tussled with Ryan before his death, but his sense of guilt lingers. Ryan's family are re-housed. On leaving day, Ryan's mother gives James the pair of brown sandals she'd bought for her son on the day of his death, which James purposefully scratches with a piece of broken glass.

Sensitive James tries to make sense of the insensitive aspects of his environment as the film proceeds in an episodic structure. He encounters the local gang bullying a girl, Margaret Anne, as they throw her glasses into the canal, but he does nothing. James falls in with the gang at one point—though they threaten to throw him into the canal to drown him like Ryan—and joins them when they visit Margaret Anne, where they each penetrate her sexually. When James is offered a turn, he lies fully clothed on Margaret Anne as she strokes his head tenderly.

One day he takes a bus to the end of its route on the outskirts of Glasgow. He explores a new housing estate under construction. Standing in front of a kitchen window in a half-built house, he wonders in awe at the view: an expansive field of wheat, blowing in the wind and reaching to the horizon. James climbs through the window and escapes into the blissful freedom of the field.

One of James' friends, a simple boy named Kenny, receives a pet mouse as a birthday present. After the gang throw the mouse around in the air to make him "fly," Kenny asks James where he would fly to. James, trying to prevent the gang from throwing it at the wall, says the moon. Kenny then ties the mouse's tail to a balloon and releases it as James and the gang watch. In a fantastical shift, the film shows it floating to the moon. Then, Kenny's mouse joins a whole colony of other mice frolicking on the moon.

James and Margaret Anne become friends and find comfort in each other's company. After his mother delouses James and his sister, he uses the materials to delouse Margaret Anne at her flat. They bathe together during the process, playing with the soap together in a child-like way.

Kenny later falls in the canal trying to catch a perch and is rescued by James' father, who briefly becomes a local hero and is given a medal for bravery. While his father is in a deep sleep following the rescue, James lets in the council inspectors tasked with assessing merit for rehousing. In his disheveled state, his father makes a poor impression on the inspectors. He berates James for the mistake and says that their likely rejection would be James's fault.

After receiving the medal, his father goes out drinking with friends. He also buys a pair of cleats for James, presumably to mend their relationship. The local gang falls upon James's father while he's playing with a stray cat on the way home and slashes him with a switchblade. When he comes home, drunk and injured, he forcefully offers the cleats to James, who rejects them.

When James's mother tries to tend to his father's injuries, he slaps her as the family look on. After, James throws the cleat at him and runs away. He visits Margaret Anne's home and the two embrace in bed. She asks him if he loves her and he says that he does.

The Army eventually arrive to clean all the rubbish from the neighbourhood. After failing to recover Margaret Anne's glasses from the canal, James sees her once again with the local gang taking turns sexually abusing her. James snaps at Kenny, saying that he killed his own mouse. Kenny then starts chanting "poor cow" about Margaret Anne, drawing James's anger. He continues, chanting that he saw James kill Ryan Quinn.

After a tender moment with his little sister, James rises early and goes to the canal, where he sinks below the surface. A brief scene is shown of James and his family moving into the new neighbourhood, carrying their furniture and possessions across the wheat field that James discovered earlier. James walks behind the main group and slowly faces the camera, his face breaking into a full smile.

The closing credits play, showing James sinking in slow motion in the murky canal water, with his fate left up to interpretation.