Horror movies are meant to frighten and shock the audience. They should make viewers squirm in their seats and then jump out of them. Most importantly, they should be spine-chilling and unpredictable.
It would seem that rats would make worthy subjects for a horror film, because you never know what they are going to do next. Unfortunately, in “Willard”, the viwers always know what the rats will do next because of the title character’s dictatorship. And instead of jumping, you marvel at the special-effects and ask yourself, “How did they do that?” This is a problem, because “Willard” is supposed to be a horror film.
The film is a remake of the 1971 movie of the same name that apparently did quite well at the box office. This new, spiced-up version has attitude and look, but the rats just aren’t scary. Crispin Glover plays Willard Stiles, a pathetic loser that seems dreadfully scared of facing the real world and making decisions.
Perhaps the only disturbing quality of the movie is Willard’s depressing personality. He befriends the rats in his basement because they’re the only creatures that do not threaten his self-esteem. Willard is creepily sympathetic with the rodents, and most of his dialogue stems from his relationship with the furry animals.
As a revenge-of-the-nerd horror fable, “Willard” utterly fails, because the revenge is not horrifying. The leader of the herd of rats is Ben, a foot-long super-rat that resembles an ugly, murderous rabbit.
This actually creates more of a comedic, cartoony effect, as Willard’s ambiguous interactions with this giant rodent are more potent than anything in his relationship with his sadistic boss at work. Somehow (the logic is beyond me) Willard manages to direct his rats into disciplined groups that scurry off on missions on his behalf, like Dr. Dolittle would. It really is quite funny.
There is an early scene in the film in which Willard ventures down into the basement after his decrepit mother complains of a rat infestation. The fuse box blows and he’s left with a flashlight, which should be the formula for a scary event. But the scene isn’t scary-ever. The blowing of the fuse is the scariest thing that happens, and the viewer wonders what the point of it was.
The best thing (or should I say only good thing) about the movie is Crispin Glover’s performance. He boasts dark, sunken eyes, a slight stoop, is very pale, and has a haircut that shouts out, “I’m a sad, strange little man.” Appropriately, his hair style is quite similar to the one he had for “Back to the Future.” There is real wit in his performance, and you’d have to be very cold and mean to not feel something for this guy as the movie progresses.
Glover has just the right mix of innocent boyishness and bubbling depression to create a character that’s both helpless and determined. This, however, also represents a problem, because his character is the only dynamic one in the entire film. A movie should not place all its faith and success in a single actor.
Laura Elena Harring of “Mulholland Drive,” plays Cathryn, a new employee at Willard’s office who worries about him and even visits him to see if he’s all right after his mother dies. She is not romantically attracted to him, but seems to want to reach out and rescue him from his maelstrom of sadness. I almost thought she was going to succeed, and was getting excited about a rising heroine as the end of the movie approached.
But during the last several minutes, as Willard is pleading for his life while trapped in his house alone with starving rats, Cathryn suddenly changes. When she realizes how messed up her new friend is, she abandons him and staggers away. In the end, she didn’t contribute anything to the film. Harring’s character might as well be left out.
If the movie were a character study, more about Willard than the rats, it might have been decent. Willard is an interesting, multi-layered person, and it was neat to see how he interacted with the few humans that he did.
However, “Willard” is a monster movie, and the monsters are supposedly the rats. They zoom across the screen in a computer animated tide and instead of screaming my lungs out, I was contemplating what program the film’s animators used. That’s not a thought that should be going through your head during a horror movie.
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