I Heart Willie

Let's get my bias out of the way. I've worked with two of the producers previously. They're friends.

This is how I knew to come to Nashville to see a 'one night only' screening of the film on the silver screen. And boy am I glad I did.

The movie theater experience has dwindled for me over the last few years. Tickets are overpriced, you're forced to pick your seat before you get into the theater, the auditorium is often freezing, the floors are sticky, and the soundtrack--especially with music and sound effects--can be deafening. It sucks.

None of this matters too much because Hollywood movies have taken a nose-dive in recent years, as well. Fewer good films are made. Virtually none that are great.

What's the problem? A lack of originality and an over-reliance on CGI and similar tech. Everything is flat and fake. Comedies and dramas are formulaic and fantasy, action, sci-fi are all live-action cartoons. It's all a drag.

Horror is much more my wife's thing than mine. I'll watch something like Blood and Honey to see how the filmmakers flesh out their unfathomable premise. I'll be intrigued by practical effects and production design. A good performance may keep me invested. But ultimately, usually, my entertainment will come from watching my wife's reactions.

Not so with I Heart Willie.

First of all, I didn't have my wife to lean on. Nor did I have my producer friends. All I had were high hopes and well-meaning curiosities.

What the hell will the story be about? Who is the psycho in the poster? How'd he become demented? What does the title mean? Who's gonna die and will it be funny or believable?

I'm not here to answer any of these questions for you. As a fan of the film, I can tell you that the journey is intense and entertaining. The answers are not obvious, but they are fun to follow and try to work out as the story unfolds.

Just as the poster suggests, this is a crazy film. If you go in blind as I did, you may enjoy the unpredictable nuttiness more than you might having an inkling of what to expect. It's a dark, gruesome film with well-paced action, near-constant suspense, and splashes of humor.

Unlike similar films of its exploitative nature, the score, set design, acting, editing, and overall production value is on-par with your typical Hollywood fare, except this flick is filled with fresh ideas. I couldn't be more proud of my friends for delivering something so fun and original while staying true to the genre. Genres work for their expectations, but finding the balance between new and recycled gimmicks and plot twists is a challenge most fail at. Blood and Honey is a good example of this. While its concept is fresh and beautifully explained in an inventive animated opening sequence, the rest of the film drags with a few interesting and suspenseful spikes.

I Heart Willie, on the hand, never drags because it's constantly twisting and turning, staying ahead of its audience.

It's not a perfect film. It won't be a film I look forward to rewatching again and again. But it is a movie experience that I'll never forget.

When I sat down to watch the 2024 horror movie "I Heart Willie", I have to admit that I harbored absolutely no expectations as the recent years flood of Mickey Mouse-faced slasher horror movies have been questionable affairs at best. But given my love of all things horror, and the fact that I hadn't already seen the movie, of course I opted to give director Alejandro G. Alegre's 2024 movie the benefit of the doubt.

Writer David Vaughn put together a pretty straightforward script. But I found it to be a dubious and less than entertaining script. Sure, for newcomers to the horror genre, then "I Heart Willie" might prove to be a worthwhile horror experience, but for a life-long horror fan, this movie just didn't really cut it, pardon the pun.

I was not familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, and that was actually something that spoke in favor of the movie. And in all honesty, then I will say that the acting performances were indeed fair.

Visually, then I will say that the blood and gore effects were good and certainly did their part to help carry the movie and keep it afloat. But Willie character himself, not so much.

This is hardly a movie that I would recommend horror fans to rush out and get to watch. Nor is it a movie that will ever grace my screen a second time.

My rating of director Alejandro G. Alegre's 2024 movie "I Heart Willie" lands on a very generous four out of ten stars.

Trying to improve their ratings, a group of paranormal investigators look to explore a local legend of a killer hiding out in an abandoned factory that features rumors suggesting him as the inspiration for Steamboat Willie forcing them into a race to stop the maniacal killer.

This was far better than expected even if it still falls a bit short. One of the finer features here is the rather solid and generally impressive means through which this one sets about trying to connect this to the more famous character. This allows the film to offer up a solid enough main setup as just a straightforward slasher, bringing the group of online explorers out to the location to investigate the claims of a lonely figure living at the remote site who serves as the source of numerous disappearances over the years. Once they arrive and start to notice the area full of signs that something's wrong including the eerie, disused look and smattering of blood left behind, it all comes together to create a solid background for what's to come involving the revelation about the killer holding victims captive around the site. This all works incredibly well at generating the kind of solid indie slasher without tying into the popular figure. That brings about a series of fun and thrilling setpieces showing the killer stalking the group in his hideout lair. The initial attack on the exterminator hanging around the facility trying to look for an infestation or the first attack on the group where he surprises the humping couple in the exterminator truck gives this a solid start with some impressive start to things. The confrontations with the hulking, masked killer stomping around have a nice brutal edge that gets enhanced by the finale which turns into some far more brutal and graphic torture sequences involving the killer capturing the surviving members of the group and setting about dismembering and torturing them for their gain. These scenes are inventive, bloody, and quite chilling with how they play out, especially once it gets to put its twist into motion, all of which make this a solid enough time overall. There are a few drawbacks holding this one down. Among the main issues here is the film's rather plainly telegraphed twist set up quite early on that it becomes painfully obvious what's going to happen later on. It starts pretty early with an obvious red light that signposts the whole thing quite easily yet the incident is supposedly treated as a revelation when it's fully unveiled as a shocking twist to the final act. It's somewhat less interesting than it comes off as when it comes about because of this which tends to also have the effect of rendering the middle section quite dull with the section being highlighted by the sluggish pace during this section. Having the low cast to knock off is a secondary issue with that as well, and when it's all coupled with the preferential treatment of the characters that comes about here there are some drawbacks to this one.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, and Brief Nudity.

While it has most of the formulaic stereotypes of a typical slasher, this movie brings an original twist to the old formula. With all of the public domain movies coming out, I was expecting just another blood and guts horror movie starring a beloved character from my youth, but what I got was a love story woven into the fabric of a gruesome tale of caution. I didn't see a masked monster out for blood, but rather a man rejected by society who is forced to embrace his inner darkness in the search for acceptance. Willie's subtle attempts to bring joy to his victims left me feeling empathy for him. Surprisingly, it feels more like an antihero movie where you cheer for the bad guys. All in all, it was a lot of fun to watch. It made me think about how many quiet oddball kids I may have affected in my youth who are now struggling with their own darkness. Be nice out there folks, you never know who might be the next Willie.

This is what happens when talentless hacks see a public domain loophole and think they can profit off it without doing any actual work. This no-budget atrocity is a shameless, soulless attempt to cash in on Mickey Mouse's new legal status, but instead of doing anything remotely creative, the filmmakers slapped together what feels like an AI-generated fever dream, then filmed it with all the production value of a high schooler's failed YouTube channel.

The script-if you can even call it that-is a string of nonsensical dialogue, delivered with the enthusiasm of someone being forced to participate in a hostage video. The acting is so bad it transcends unintentional comedy and becomes physically painful. The characters don't just lack development-they barely function as human beings, wandering aimlessly from one scene to the next like extras in a film that forgot to give them direction. The killer? A walking lawsuit waiting to happen, with zero menace, zero presence, and a costume that looks like it was fished out of a dumpster behind a Spirit Halloween.

And don't expect even remotely decent kills-this is pure amateur-hour nonsense. The "practical effects" amount to what looks like expired ketchup smeared on dollar-store props, with editing so incompetent that half the time, you can't even tell what's happening. The camera work is so shaky it could double as a medical test for vertigo, and the sound mixing is so horrendous you'll be constantly adjusting the volume to figure out if people are whispering or screaming.

But the real crime here is the producers-whoever greenlit this mess should be publicly shamed for thinking audiences are stupid enough to fall for it. This isn't filmmaking; it's a cheap, lazy scam, a pathetic attempt to ride the coattails of a beloved character while putting in the absolute minimum effort. I Heart Willie isn't just bad-it's insulting. If you watch this, the real horror is realizing the time you wasted can never be regained.