WILLARD -------
"It's an awful name" his mother tells him, "from now on your name is Clark." This is just one more burden for the painfully awkward young man, verbally abused during the day by his deceased father's partner Mr. Martin (R. Lee Ermey, "Full Metal Jacket") before returning in the evening to his entombing, outdated home and the psychologically grasping, physically decaying woman who will no longer call him "Willard."
"Willard, there are rats in the cellar" says Mama Stiles (Jackie Burroughs, "Last Night") as the film's stop-motion opening credits segue to black. Crispin Glover ("Charlie's Angels"), looking like a Victorian clerk with center parted hair and old dark suit stiff and shiny on his gaunt frame, ascends an old wooden staircase resignedly to listen to his mother's latest rant. Writer/director Glen Morgan and producer James Wong switch roles from their "Final Destination" collaboration to remake the 1971 film about a social misfit who bonded with rats adding heavy doses of Hitchcock's "Psycho" and "The Birds" to the mix. The latter homage works stylistically, but the "Psycho" influence is too strong. Morgan provides no background for the development of Henrietta Stiles's abusive, repressive behavior, especially when contrasted against the obvious loving memory Willard has of his dad (shown in family oils and photos by Bruce Davison, the original Willard).
Gordon works plenty of humor into Willard's initial forays to the local hardware store for pest repellents, aided by cinematographer Robert McLachlan's ("Final Destination") artful angles and composition. Willard is amazed to discover his mother is right (she claims to have smelled rats from the home's second floor), then flummoxed when the rats outwit his traps. When the sticky paper he tries next slows a fine white specimen down, Willard's heart melts and he rescues his new best friend Socrates. There are more where Socrates came from, and Willard discovers he can train an army of the creatures to advance, retreat and destroy. But trouble looms in Ben, a huge brown specimen ready to
challenge Willard's authority when he doesn't receive Socrates's special treatment. Willard employs his rats to revenge his mistreatment at work, but the act sets a chain of escalating horror in motion and Willard's conflict with dominant Ben forces him to become like the rat he grows to hate.
The original "Willard" is perhaps most remembered for the Oscar winning Michael Jackson song named for its sequel, "Ben," which is coyly (and too cutely) reused in the new film. Morgan was astute to take a mediocre horror flick and attempt to explore new facets of it and the casting of Crispin Glover was positively inspired. Striking production values and a unique central characterization don't overcome the weakness of the original story, which just never really was compelling, but Glover, Morgan and his production team bring enough fresh twists to an old tale to maintain interest.
Mark Freeborn's ("See Spot Run") production design is a star of the film in its own right. The Stiles's home is one of those once stately homes which have fallen into disrepair and preserve a way of life several decades past. The Martin-Stiles manufacturing office is also dingy and dated, attributable to the miserly ways of the firm's surviving partner. The animal trainers and effects crew also get high marks as hundreds of real rats (sometimes enhanced and only rarely replaced with CGI, most spectacularly for a scene which mimics "The Shining's" torrent of blood unleased from an elevator) always hit their marks.
Glover makes Willard far more interesting than his predecessor did. The actor appears almost handsome initially, a softness about his eyes expressing his communion with his creature Socrates or his fearful inward shrinking from society. As events bring out a diabolical streak in Willard, he seems more angular and more ratlike in his movements. His best scene is a frustrated outburst at his mother's wake, unexpected and hilarious. Although her character isn't given sufficient background motivation, Jackie Burroughs delivers wonderful creep as Willard's invasive mother. She's a withered invalid who can maintain a death grip on her walker and her horrifyingly intimate questions about Willard's private matters are both funny and offputting. R. Lee Ermey delivers his stock shrieking villain in a part with little room for shading while Laura Elena Harring ("Mulholland Drive") gives a nice air of quiet caring to a sympathetic office worker.
"Willard" is a weird little movie handled with a disproportionate care that makes it oddly worthwhile.
B-
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