This is the only chance you have to take control of your own life.
Now this is more like it. After being left wanting by the paltry rat scenes in Andy Milligan's The Werewolves Are Unpleasant! The Rats Are Barely Here!, I suppose I could have gone back to Plan Nine Video and rented the original Willard, but I've long wanted to see Crispin Glover's take on the role that Bruce Davison made famous, so I went with the 2003 remake instead. Written for the screen and directed by Glen Morgan, based on Gilbert Ralston's 1971 screenplay more so than the original novel, this Willard is a showcase for Glover's wonderfully deranged performance, which has a lot more shadings than you would expect from a movie about killer rats.
As the story opens, Glover is beholden to his ailing mother (Jackie Burroughs, made up to look like she's right at death's door) and under the thumb of his intimidating boss (R. Lee Ermey, typecast but a real hoot), who bought the company out from under Glover's father, now dead. (He's represented in photos and portraits by Davison, a nice touch.) Ironically, the only person who's even remotely nice to him is Laura Elena Harring, the temp who's being groomed to replace Glover just as soon as Burroughs dies and Ermey can can him. Then he befriends a little white rat that he names Socrates and finds he's able to communicate with and command the army of rats living in his basement -- with the sole exception of the one he names Ben on account of its size. What "looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship" soon turns into a bitter rivalry, though, especially after Socrates is taken out of the picture.
So much of the success of the film hinges on Glover, who knows how to behave like the kind of guy who could get chummy with a rodent. Even in the moments when he goes over the top, like his freakout at the funeral parlor when a tactless bank official interrupts his mother's service to inform him of the sizable debts he is now saddled with, it feels entirely justified under the circumstances. The only scene that seems like camp for camp's sake is the blackly comic one where Harring gifts Glover with her pet cat, which is literally thrown to the rats and attempts to escape from them to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Ben" (which Glover covers over the closing credits). That it is immediately forgotten about (you'd think Harring would ask about it at some point, but she doesn't) leads me to believe that Morgan must not be a cat person. Anybody who is (or suffers from musophobia) is advised to steer clear.