WILLY’S WONDERLAND Review
There’s a few combinations in the course of human history that have changed things for the greater good: Peanut butter and chocolate, mac and cheese, and acclaimed Academy Award winning actor Nicolas Cage bludgeoning a bunch of bloodthirsty animatronics. Well, that’s how the list should go. But try as WILLY’S WONDERLAND might, a home run of a movie idea somehow turns into a product that is contradictorily carried by its whacked out idea while also failing to fully live up to its promise.
Quickly introducing its star as he gets a flat in his super awesome sports car, G.O. Parsons’ story quickly brings Cage’s unnamed hero into the eponymous setting of Willy’s Wonderland, a kid friendly pizza joint that’s now been left abandoned after a series of gruesome murders tainted the chain’s image. Lacking the funds to fix his flat tire — as it seems Cage only operates on leather jackets and some kind of energy drink/beer called Punch — Cage quietly accepts a deal to where if he can clean up the abandoned pizzeria for one night, he can get his car fixed for free. A good deal sure, but of course none of the locals tell Cage that Willy’s Wonderland is now haunted by a group of abandoned yet still kicking animatronics, who now see a new feast in Cage. Of course, it’s not long before Cage — who is seemingly more concerned with legitimately cleaning up the dusty pizza place — is beating a bunch of animatronic demons’ asses one by one.
To its betterment, director Kevin Lewis and Parsons keep WILLY’S WONDERLAND refreshingly simple. One enjoyably simple surprise being the fact that the film’s star is relegated to playing a literal strong and silent type; an aspect that only continues to draw comparisons between this film’s idea and that of the popular FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S video game franchise (itself apparently getting a film adaptation), which deals with the very similar scenario of a silent protagonist facing off against animatronics gone bad. Nevertheless, Cage hardly, if ever, talks in this film, instead letting his vogue glowers and eventual bloodied fists do the talking. While no means a game-changer for such a blank slate of a character, having Cage calmly and quietly dispatch demonic pizza mascots with ease proves both badass and somewhat funny. However, Parsons for whatever reason decides that the idea of one silent, all-business badass casually dispatching possessed puppets in an abandoned pizzeria could benefit from having additional, much more irritating characters peek their heads in; namely, a group of your copy-paste horror film young adults (I could never tell if these kids were supposed to be in high school or college) who whine and stupefy their way in between Nic Cage and his furry, robotic victims. While most of the performers seem to know that they are in a C-rate horror movie — playing up over-exaggerated screams and archetype traits — the film’s script fails to make those characters interesting in any way resulting in a group that’s a nuisance to Cage’s character and the film’s own sense of pace. As the film posits, why would we spend too much time watching Nic Cage beat up a giant ostrich puppet when we could see some annoying kids argue about the pros and cons of going into an abandoned pizzeria?
This one aspect acts as a symptom for the film’s main issue which is that it never becomes as rowdy, violent, or bonkers as its main catch may suggest. Most disappointing of all is the fact that WILLY’S WONDERLAND never delivers much satisfying action, despite multiple moments where Lewis and his crew set up some nifty sequences…in idea. As the night moves on and Cage’s hero dispatches the possessed animatronics with comical ease — as, according to a every other character Cage comes across tells it, these goofy animatronics are apparently unstoppable killing machines — Lewis stages each showdown in some pretty bland settings beset by some garish lighting that illuminate hastily cut fight scenes that boil down to Cage just punching a bunch of puppets to death. I mean, come on! You have all these pretty solid animatronic/costume designs for Willy’s creatures and yet none of them — except for one frog character — ever uses their powers/weapons in any interesting way. For all its cursing and random bouts of sex and illusions of mayhem, WILLY’S WONDERLAND is pretty tame for an R-Rated horror film.
Luckily, as mentioned before, there’s a lot of power in just the idea of Cage beating up silly puppet monsters in between moments of him playing pinball. While a majority of the acting kind of stinks, the fights scenes on their own are pretty boring, and the film itself looks pretty cheap, you will see Cage kill a whole bunch of animatronics before casually going back to cleaning a shitty bathroom and believe it or not, there’s a good amount of entertainment to be found in that.
2.5/5
