Movie Review- Willard (2003)

Willard tells the tale of Willard Stiles (Crispin Glover), a mentally ill young man who befriends a swarm of rats. It's a very strange premise, and it's told in an equally strange way. This is labeled as a horror movie, but there's few horror elements to it. While at first it seems like the movie is just building suspense, it becomes apparent that this is more of a character study of Willard. Crispin Glover does an excellent job as the title character, and while he gets extremely hammy towards the ending, he does a good job given the script. The character of Willard Stiles, however, is pretty lame; he's just the generic "bad stuff happened to me, and I went crazy" character, and I find it odd that this movie acts like a character study when the character itself is bland.

The supporting cast is scarce, but when they're around, they aren't that great. The various others actors give fairly bland performances. Nothing special, but nothing terrible. One actor worth noting, though, Lee Ermey who plays Mr. Martin, Willard's evil boss. Lee Ermey gives the same performance as his character in "Full Metal Jacket"; this is particularly amusing because his repeated yelling and foul mouth seem extremely out of place in an otherwise mundane office workplace.

The script could have used some improvement as well. There are several scenes that feel clumsily put together, and takes away from the potential that the movie had. There's a scene where Willard is training his rats to do his bidding, and he has a little rudimentary training ground for them. There's also a scene where Willard's rats hunt down and eat a cat that was given to him. This scene adds nothing to the plot, and seems only there as an excuse to play "Ben", the theme to the original film's sequel, Ben. While this a personal annoyance, I also found it strange that Willard named his favorite rat "Socrates". The point is supposed to be that the rat is smart, and he named him Socrates because of that; but I found it to be really distracting, particularly during the more suspenseful scenes. Nothing takes you out of a suspenseful moment more than a guy talking to a write rat named Socrates.

There's also strange plot point that revolves around Willard's hatred for one of his rats named Ben. Willard has some strange delusion that the rat hates him, and he makes several attempts to kill him, yet he still uses him for his evil deeds later on in the movie. And during the climax of the movie, Willard seems unwilling to kill Ben, despite his previous attempts at doing so. One could argue that it's just Willard's mental instability, but I say it's lazy screenwriting.

The only strong suit of this film however, is the atmosphere. The art direction seems heavily influenced by Tim Burton. There's an air of spookiness to the film  that remains strong throughout the plot, and it makes the movie a lot better. The set design has a very unsanitary and grungy feel to it,  much like the rats that pervade the film. But as usual, visuals and atmosphere alone cannot save a movie. They do make it a heck of a lot better, though.

Overall, this is a pretty uneven film. It's supposed to be a horror movie, but it acts more like a mildly creepy character study; the atmosphere is creepy, but there's prolonged spaces of time without anything creepy going on, and it dampens the effect, and so on. It's a pretty bland horror movie, but it's certainly not horrible. It's not all that great of a film, but if you're a fan of Crispin Glover, it's worth watching just for him.

Enjoyment- 3/5

Quality- 3/5

IMDB Page- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0310357/