Best movie of this year hands down!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A surprise even to me, I ended up liking this a lot, it's straightforward yet effective style really worked for me. It was like it had the charming simplicity of a children's spooky show, crossed with something that was much more ruthless and grim, it was like "Are You Afraid of the Dark" with real venom! For me it really blurred the line between what constitutes kid friendly and child nightmare inducing, like you had the blood and gore, not much at all but it was definitely there, you had the nauseating scene of the old lady taking a big 'ol juicy bite out of the fried rat, it had one use of the word s**t! And most noteworthy, it actually had violence and death perpetrated against young children! I'm not gonna pretend it wasn't, the acting was mostly terrible, especially from the kids in the wraparound campfire scenes(Sean Astin not included), and in the story of the kindly janitor who was really a monster in disguise who had an appetite for school bullies! I loved that, bullies and mean teachers simply being devoured, you'd never get that in a movie like this these days, it's not P.C. enough! A lot of the stuff that goes down in this picture is more than a little out there! I did find it to be moderately unnerving at points. Like when the kid goes to the school bathroom and the spindly fanged beast crawls out of the toilet, I sure wasn't expecting something so spooky and threatening to appear! And the story with the fat kid I liked best because I found something interesting and almost sympathetic about him, how his parents had opposite opinions about him, and how he only seemed able to communicate with other kids by playing sick pranks on them. I loved the bizarre visuals of his twisted little model town populated by dead flies, that was so striking and creepy! Very neat and weird, never seen anything like that. Nice grisly ending too, with the sadistic boy getting the 'wings' pulled off him in return! The effect of the giant flies was funky, but to me it was kinda scary all the same. And the movie's ending was quite mean-spirited also, those boys asked to know the truth and they certainly got it! I'm not saying this was a brilliant film or anything, it could've benefited from a third story although I reckon the vignettes could serve as that, but it was overall a fun scary time, its overtly dark elements make it notable amongst most other child horror movies that I've seen. No real Boo! type scares, it's more about gross sight gags and monsters coming to get you, which is fine and dandy with me from time to time. Oh my, the kinds of interesting tales that kids can tell... Give it a shot!

The VHS culture of the 90's was still booming. As a child I would automatically travel to the horror section in my local video store,and I would be intrigued by various movies. But The Willies always seemed to interest me. After multiple viewings of this film I have grown quite fond of this film. The film begins with three boys in a tent trying to gross each out by telling urban legends, you know stories about a woman microwaving her dog and a woman eating a rat at a fried chicken restaurant. But then we get to the stories of the movie. The story is about a weirdo who has a fetish for collecting flies and the other story is about a kid who discovers a creep in his High School bathroom.Not really going into a lot about the stories cause you needs to watch. The film has it's moments of pure grossness and is filled with cameos by Clu Gulager and James Karen both from Return of the Living Dead (the film is directed by a star of that film as well), it also has a wink to The Goonies (in which Sean Astin stars). But if you are a fan of "Are you afraid of the Dark" and other type of Anthrology type stuff like that you'll most likely love The Willies. It is filled with great imagination and it has the right amount of cheese of a B-movie. Also after years of owning the film on VHS I never knew that it came with an alternate VHS slip cover so that is another plus to this amazing film.

The first mistake that "The Willies" makes is staying at a PG-13 rating. Not only will adults feel the horror in this movie is watered down, but so will the kids and teenagers this movie is aimed at! The next mistake is with the movie starting off with three very short stories which are urban legends that EVERYONE has heard of before - no surprises. The movie's subsequent two stories - which take up most of the movie - aren't very entertaining as well. As it has been noted by other user comments, the story of the bullied boy and the monster in the bathroom was obviously inspired by the Stephen King short story, "Here There Be Tygers". There is a monster that doesn't look bad for a movie that had a very low budget, but that's just a few seconds of entertainment. The second story, about a boy obsessed with flies, goes on forever. It could have easily been cut down, but it would still have the problem that the twist at the end is very predictable. Aside from the creature effects, the only thing entertaining about "The Willies" is one in-joke that references the movie THE GOONIES, which Sean Astin also appeared in.

this movie is basically about two brothers and their cousin who decide to scare each other by telling each other spooky urban legends while camping out.i guess you could compare it the TV shows Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark,although it's not as good as either of those two.anyway,what follows are two separate tales.the first one is pretty good.it's sort of a black comedy.it is quite amusing,and compelling.plus,it is well written.the second of the tales is not so good.much of the odd behaviour and events are given no reason or explanation.also this tale is boring and feels way too long.the ending makes no sense and doesn't tie into the rest of the story.long story short,the first tale is good-second one-not so much.for me,this movie is a 5/10