Rating- * * (2/5)
Read my review in The Crimson White
Here is a perfect example of a film that appears to embody the old adage “too many cooks spoil a stew.” The overwhelming consensus in the world of film critics is that all the best films have one person known as the auteur (French for “author”) that has creative control over every aspect of the film. When a film’s overall composition is determined by more than one creative voice, the result is a slightly mixed up mess and the more people that have a say in the project, the worse that mess gets. Willard, a remake of the cult classic ‘70s film of the same name, has all the right ingredients to be a terribly interesting or at the worst a terribly entertaining film, but falls short because of one crippling problem: it lacks direction. The story begins with a young man named, you guessed it, Willard (Crispin Glover) who lives in a dusty, decrepit old house with his bedridden and mean-tempered mother. Willard is a shy, quiet young man, which is probably a result of his mother constantly complaining about how weak and unattractive he is. He has no friends and is constantly hassled by his boss, Mr. Martin (R. Lee Ermey) for slacking off on the job. We discover that Martin actually scammed Willard’s father out of his business and allowed Willard to stay on as an employee only until his mother dies, which looks to be rather soon. One day, Willard finds a rat trap in the basement that has caught a still living white rat who is trying to get away. Willard begins to feel compassion for the little creature and decides to save it and make a pet out of it. He trains the little rat to do tricks and to his surprise, the rat begins to teach other rats the same tricks. Willard decides to name his rat Socrates for his leadership capabilities and makes him leader of all the rats in the basement. While this all seems rather whimsical, keep in mind that Willard is a man with a lot of pent up aggression and rather than have fun with his rats, he decides to use them for more malicious ends. Willard trains the rats into his own personal army and uses them to get back at Mr. Martin for all the pain and anguish he has caused. Willard and his army get along quite well for a time until one giant rat named Ben decides that he should be allowed in on the action. Ben is rather expressive for a rat and allows us to see his jealousy towards Socrates and his defiance to Willard. The subplot involving the struggle for power between Willard, Socrates and Ben is by far the most interesting part of the movie but is unfortunately neglected because the film seems to think it should be more of a horror film. There is nothing wrong with being a horror film, but the problem with this approach is that the rats are really not very scary. Creepy and gross, sure, but not so much scary. There is an entire sequence based on the filmmakers’ assumption of the rats’ scariness involving a cat running through Willard’s now rat infested house trying to escape the army of rats while the Jackson 5 song “Ben” is playing in the background. This scene is meant to be extremely creepy but ends up coming off as rather sadistic. Still other subplots, like the hinting of a romance between Mulholland Drive’s Laura Elena Harring and Willard are totally fruitless and add absolutely nothing to the film as a whole. Like I said, there are elements in the concept of this film that are quite interesting and could make for an interesting movie in the right hands, but with Glen Morgan’s complete lack of control as the director of this film, we are left with a benign, pointless mess. I can’t recommend this film to you unless you are a fan of the original or if you have some weird thing for rats.