Welcome to Willits is a pure genre experience full of stock characters, standard narrative tropes and the sort of low-tech visuals audiences expect from minimal-budget horror slasher films. Within this limited matrix, the film does manage to be fast-paced and engaging; it does not break new ground, but it also will not be disappointing to audiences who are expecting gore and goofiness.
Welcome to Willits is about the deadly collision of two narrative strands. The first plot line follows Courtney (Anastasia Baranova), a recent college graduate returning to her home with her uncle, Brock (Bill Sage), in the forests of northern California’s “Emerald Triangle.” The second story centers on Jeremiah (Chris Zylka), who has come to the area on a camping trip with several of his friends. Jeremiah’s group of campers set up tents in close proximity to Brock’s cabin, facilitating the overlapping of the two narratives over a single fateful night.
Brock is a pot-growing methamphetamine cook who has waking nightmares of being abducted by aliens. His particular strand of home-made meth gives its users a proclivity for hallucinating aliens and, since Brock is constantly high on his own stuff, he is consistently delirious with paranoia about the presence of aliens. They only come at night, however, so Welcome to Willits only hits its action-horror stride come nightfall.
The cabin in the woods is well fortified to withstand alien aggression. Brock has blindingly-bright floodlights, a maze of marijuana plants and strategically-emplaced bear traps. Unfortunately for Jeremiah and his friends at their campsite, Brock’s defenses also make his cabin a dangerous place to explore for curious humans. The campers, one by one, leave their tents and encroach upon the cabin, either in search of hot springs rumored to be in the area or in pursuit of one another.
Once there, they clash with Brock. They steal his weed, get caught in his bear traps and generally draw attention to themselves through their bumbling stupidity. Brock, stoned out of his mind on his meth, hallucinates the coterie of human intruders as nefarious aliens come to terrorize him in his home. He murders them all, usually with his handy shotgun. Courtney, for her part, is bound and gagged and locked in a closet in the cabin and stands accused of consorting with the alien invaders after being caught using her cell phone. Soon, only Jeremiah remains alive, albeit with a bear trap-induced leg wound, while Courtney has managed to escape her bondage. Welcome to Willits transitions to a survival-vengeance drama as it builds to the climactic clash between Jeremiah, Courtney and Brock in the floodlit vicinity of the now blood-spattered cabin.
Welcome to Willits is capably crafted, particularly after the first act gets each of the characters in place and the sun goes down. The first act, however, has numerous issues. In particular, the opening scene shows a Brock hallucination of his abduction, but the production values and lack of context make it quite off-putting; it is not an effective way to commence a film. Furthermore, the sound editing in the first act is very aggressive and overdone; there are too many hooting owls, for instance. A third major problem in the first several minutes is the quite limited acting ability of most of the cast, especially Jeremiah’s friends. These are not talented actors and, fortunately for them, in most subsequent scenes they are asked to do little more than wander in the woods and get shot in the face, but in the opening chapters they have to act and they do not do it well.
Welcome to Willits should meet the expectations of any viewer who chooses it knowing its genre, but nothing more than pure audience service should be anticipated.
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