I need a rat army. This is what
I learned from the new horror film “Willard”, directed
by X-Files veteran writer Glen Morgan, and based on the 1971
film of the same name. I need a force of vermin, thousands strong,
to go forth and do my bidding. I don’t really have any
bidding right now – I’m not too sure what “bidding”
is, exactly – but if I had a rat army they would go forth
and do it. And I would stand up high on something, maybe a chair
so the rats wouldn’t run up my leg, and bellow to my minions
in dominant tones “Go forth and fetch my dry cleaning!”
And they would. Sure, my shirts might be slightly gnawed at
when the rats returned them to me, but at least that’s
one less chore I would have to do during the weekend.
Crispen Glover plays Willard (a creepy role that the creepy
actor was creepily born to play), a put-upon, milquetoast
young man who hates his life. He hates the fact that he has
to take care of his feeble aged mother who has rats on the
brain. He hates his job, being forced to partake in the rat-race
by his drill-sergeant-like boss (played by former drill sergeant
R. Lee Emery). He also hates being a mob informant for the
F.B.I.’s organized crime division, because ratting out
your fellow mobsters is distasteful to him. Actually, that
last part’s not true, but I couldn’t come up with
a third rat joke for this paragraph. Sue me. Anyway, “Willard”
is the sensitive tale of the forbidden love between a boy
and his… rat.
The movie begins when Willard’s flem-spitting hag of
a mother (played to flem-spitting perfection by Jackie Burroughs)
orders her milquetoast son to the basement to kill the invading
rats. However, after he sees the first so-called “cute”
white rat in his basement, Willard changes his mind. He cleans
the rat off, baptizes it “Socrates”, and takes it
to bed with him. Under cover of darkness, Willard whispers
to Socrates “I hate everyone but you”. And thus,
young love is born.
This is another thing I learned from watching “Willard”:
a love between two people who come from different worlds always
ends in tragedy. “Willard” follows in the tradition
of many other great love stories: “Romeo and Juliet”,
“West Side Story”, the second season of “Six
Feet Under”; it doesn’t matter if you’re Capulet
or Montague, Puerto Rican or White, if you come from different
worlds one of you is going to end up dead in an office supply
closet.
However, the misunderstood love between Willard and Socrates
prompts the jealousy of the other potential “alpha-rat”
in the basement, a horridly over-grown beast that Willard
dubs “Ben”. The majority of the movie, aside from
disgusting shots of rats running all over the place (more
on that later) is about the passive-aggressive power struggle
between Willard, Socrates, and Ben. The thousands of other
rats who inhabit the basement don’t seem to factor into
this power struggle. They’re just happy chewing old tires
in the basement and shitting on the floor.
This leads to another thing I learned from watching “Willard”.
Living with roommates is never easy. The three male leads
(Glover, Rat #1 and Rat #2) bicker constantly. Their arguments
are all typical roommate problems, nothing that hasn’t
been seen before on ten seasons of “The Real World”.
Willard shows preference to Socrates, so Ben invites all of
his friends over to hang out late. Willard would rather sleep
with Socrates, so Ben responds by killing Willard’s mother
and gnawing on her corpse. Typical roommate shit.
As a horror film, “Willard” isn’t all that
scary. There is very little to jolt the average viewer out
of his seat, though I have to admit that I am far from the
average viewer. Full disclosure: rats terrify me. Basically,
any creature that crawls freaks me out. Mice, rats, toddlers,
I hate the little fuckers. So for majority of the movie I
was squealing like a little girl, and now I’m afraid
to go to sleep for fear that the rats will get me.
The word on the street is that the original 1971 film is
a much creepier experience. It starred Bruce Davidson as the
titular character, and Ernest Borgnine as his evil boss who
meets his demise at the tiny, tiny paws of all the rats. Davidson
shows up in the new version, appearing in a larger-than-life
portrait of Willard’s dead father. I don’t want
to insult Davidson, a very competent actor who’s appeared
in many films whose names I can’t remember, but I sincerely
doubt his performance could hold a candle to Crispen Glover’s.
Every twitch of his eyes, every clench of his teeth, is a
symphony of repressed rage and sexual frustration. It surprised
me, but he was actually creepier than the rats.
One last thought: aside from the roommate-bickering between
Willard and the rats, the majority of the film consists of
Willard suffering the abuse of his evil, domineering boss
(Emery). These segments are disappointing. They aren’t
thrilling, scary, or even darkly comic. But since it is specifically
the abuses of the evil boss that bring about his own demise,
I’m going to end this review not with something I have
learned, but with a nugget of wisdom I wish to teach- specifically,
to my current and any future employers. You know who you are…
If I come in to work habitually twenty minutes late, let
it slide. If I spend hours sitting on my desk, staring off
into space and not working, let it slide. If I just generally
creep you out, let it slide. I may just love rats.
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Above:
Crispin Glover as Willard.
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