Willy’s Wonderland – 2021 – United States
If you are not familiar with the Five Nights at Freddie’s series of video games, Willy’s Wonderland might seem like an original movie. In the movie, a man is trapped in a condemned Chuck E. Cheese-like restaurant where he battles possessed animatronic puppets. This is a great premise, but it borrows heavily from the extremely popular game series. It’s basically an unofficial adaptation, so it’s hard to be impressed by what is mostly a rip-off. Even the designs for the killer puppets are extremely similar between the movie and the game. That being said, Willy’s Wonderland is more entertaining than the official Five Nights at Freddie’s movie from 2023.
Willy’s Wonderland isn’t a very well-made horror movie. There isn’t much tension or atmosphere, and despite all its intentional camp, it isn’t very funny either. It’s admirable how little the creators of this movie seemed to care about making a “real” movie. It’s like a series of disjointed scenes that only equals a story if you fill in the blanks yourself. That being said, the movie is highly surreal, and that keeps things interesting.
Nicolas Cage plays “The Janitor”, an entirely silent character who gets tricked into cleaning Willy’s Wonderland. When the evil puppets attack, he is completely unfazed, and he uses martial arts to utterly destroy them. He takes a break every hour, on the hour, to slam a soda and play pinball. One time, he even does this in the middle of a fight scene. The pinball scenes are especially strange. The Janitor dances as he plays, and it’s sort of sexual. None of this is ever explained, and it just seems weird for the sake of being weird, which is a good enough reason for anything, I suppose.
There is also a subplot about teenagers who sneak into Willy’s Wonderland. The town sheriff is also sacrificing out-of-towners to the puppets. But none of that amounts to much. Despite its horror movie-like setup, Willy’s Wonderland has no sense of danger or fear. Never is there any doubt that The Janitor will effortlessly clobber every puppet he comes across.
Rating: 6/10 Shrunken Heads
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