Tin
foil hats—they’re not just for conspiracy nutters anymore. An alien abduction
survivor will deck out his terrified niece Courtney in an aluminum foil skull
cap as a defense against extraterrestrial mind control. Clearly, Courtney is
one of the few sane ones her family, just as Jeremiah is really the only decent
dude in the group of college friends camping not far from Uncle Brock’s cabin.
These two kids really ought to get together in Trevor Ryan’s Welcome to Willets (trailer here), which opens tomorrow
in New York.
Old
Brock has lost it. Who knows, maybe he really was abducted, but the subsequent
post-traumatic stress and paranoia have completely unhinged his psyche. Aunt
Peggy either humors him or has come to share his delusions. They hope the “aliens”
will not bother them while Courtney is staying with them, but when the
obnoxious Zack starts prowling around their Emerald Triangle pot grove, it triggers all the
wrong responses in Uncle Brock’s head. Soon he starts to suspect the
understandably freaked out Courtney is acting under alien influence, so they
tie her up and chuck her into the closet.
Surprisingly,
the Ryans, director Trevor and screenwriter Tim, do not play a lot of
is-he-or-isn’t-he, are-they-or-aren’t-they games. Notwithstanding his flashbacks,
it is pretty clear from early on Uncle Brock is just completely off his rocker.
Bill Sage, who is no stranger to horror movies, is perfectly cast as the crazy
uncle. You could almost call it a throwback performance that is more sadly
tragic (and acutely human) than scary.
However,
the real highlight of the film is a series of cameo appearances from Dolph Lundgren
as a fictional shoot-first-and-then-shoot-again-later TV cop (on the show Fists
of Justice), whom the aliens periodically use to issue threats to Brock, at
least in his head. As you would expect, whenever Lundgren is on-screen to
lunacy cranks up to eleven. In all seriousness, it is time for the Academy to
recognize Lundgren’s contributions with an honorary Oscar. He is a survivor, who
has made key contributions to the Rocky,
Expendables, and Universal Soldier franchises.
He fought commies in Red Scorpion and
sharks in Shark Lake. He is also a
prominent activist in the real-life fight against human trafficking, which makes
him more of a humanitarian and a better actor than that screeching, over-acting
Meryl Streep, so there is really no excuse to deny him the recognition he is
due.
So,
anyway, Willets is basically a
crazy-hicks-in-the-woods movie, but it has a great cast. In addition to Lundgren
and Sage, Rory Culkin probably takes on the role he was born to play as Possum,
the drug-addled, conspiracy theory-spouting drifter, who awkwardly tags along
with Jeremiah’s shallow pals. Garrett Clayton is spectacularly obnoxious as the
entitled Zack, while Anastasia Baranova and Chris Zylka are appealingly earnest
and grounded as Courtney and Jeremiah.