Willard (2003)
Cast: Crispin Glover, R. Lee Ermey, Laura Elena Harring, Jackie Burroughs
Director: Glen Morgan
Synopsis: Bates-like outcaste finds unlikely friends and allies in murderous vengeance
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

 

Way back in the early 1970s, Stephen Gilbert's novel Ratman's Notebooks was adapted for the screen by director Daniel Mann as Willard. The film became something of a sleeper hit on the midnight movie circuit and proved successful enough to spawn a sequel, Ben, in 1972.

Willard is a wonderfully quirky tale about a lonely social outcast who, rejected and ridiculed by almost everyone around him, discovers genuine companionship in the form of a thriving colony of rats living beneath his house. Gradually, the downtrodden Willard trains his furry army to wage war on those who have tormented him throughout his life. The only complication comes in the form of an enormous rat named Ben, who begins to regard himself—not Willard—as the true leader of the pack.

Rat movies have never exactly been box-office gold. The original Willard performed reasonably well thanks to the novelty of its premise and because audiences in the early 1970s were rather more receptive to unusual horror concepts than they might be today. Ben also enjoyed a respectable run, but neither film ever approached the commercial heights achieved by shark, dinosaur or even snake movies.

In Hollywood's food chain, rats generally occupy a very lowly position.

They are creatures usually condemned to low-budget cable movies rather than major studio productions, making New Line Cinema's decision to revisit Willard more than thirty years later something of a gamble.

Since the original films, not a single rat-centred horror movie had managed to make much of an impression at the box office. If the premise felt unusual in 1971, it seemed positively eccentric by the early 2000s. At a time when Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees were preparing to collide in multiplexes, and Alien was returning triumphantly to cinemas, New Line's decision to invest in an old-fashioned rat thriller seemed a distinctly curious one.

Then again, who could have predicted that swashbucklers would suddenly become fashionable again? Perhaps audiences really were ready for another rat movie.

Or so New Line hoped.

The answer arrived quickly enough.

Hardly anybody went to see it.

The film disappeared from cinemas almost as quickly as it arrived, sinking at the box office like the proverbial dead duck...or perhaps, more appropriately, a dead rat.

This time, the unfortunate Willard is played by Crispin Glover, who certainly looks suitably unhinged. Yet despite his obvious commitment, he never quite convinces as a genuinely sinister figure. His eruptions of anger lack menace, leaving him appearing more pitiful than frightening.

Ordered by his overbearing mother to rid the basement of rats, Willard instead finds himself rescuing a small white mouse trapped on one of those thoroughly unpleasant sticky boards. Horrified by the suffering he has caused, he frees the terrified animal, and from that moment, a touching friendship develops between man and mouse.

Before long, Willard commands an entire battalion of rats, drilling his furry recruits with almost military precision—rather like watching an al-Qaeda training camp run entirely by rodents. Eventually, he unleashes them upon those responsible for making his life such a misery.

The basic storyline remains virtually identical to the original, merely updated with modern visual effects and considerably more elaborate sound design.

Does it work?

Sadly, not really.

The fundamental problem is that the film simply isn't very interesting. It desperately needed either a sharper sense of humour, considerably more outrageous horror, or preferably both. One cannot help wondering whether a gleefully over-the-top approach in the vein of Peter Jackson's Braindead might have transformed the material into something genuinely entertaining.

Instead, director Glen Morgan delivers a faithful but rather plodding remake that never really escapes the shadow of its predecessor. The story holds few surprises, and the pacing becomes increasingly sluggish. By the final quarter of an hour, I found myself struggling to remain awake.

Lee Ermey emerges with considerable credit, and Glover does everything possible with the material he has been given, but neither can overcome a screenplay that feels oddly humourless and devoid of real imagination. The special effects are undeniably impressive, yet technical polish alone cannot compensate for a lack of freshness, invention or genuine suspense.

Ultimately, Willard proves to be a curiously pointless remake. It is neither frightening enough to satisfy horror fans nor emotionally involving enough to function as a serious character study of loneliness and alienation.

If it was intended as a moving fable about society's outsiders, there are considerably better films exploring those themes.

And if all you really want is a good rat movie...

You might simply be better off watching the original.

This new Willard is a considerable disappointment—even allowing for the fact that it is, after all, only a rat movie.