Welcome to another installment of 31 Days of Halloween! This is our chance to set the mood for the spookiest and scariest month of the year as we focus our attention on horror and Halloween fun. For the month of October we’ll be sharing various pieces of underappreciated scary books, comics, movies, and television to help keep you terrified and entertained all the way up to Halloween.
I love a great bad movie as much as the next person. Whether the film is an earnest failure or clearly made as a joke, cinematic catastrophes can be a lot of fun to watch — especially in the horror genre.
So when a film comes out starring Nicholas Cage going up against demon-possessed animatronics, it feels like a can’t miss proposition. Even if you’ve never played a Five Nights at Freddy‘s game, plenty of us went to Chuck E. Cheese back when the main attraction was a singing mechanical rat and his nightmare fuel backup band. Heck, I’m old enough to remember when it was a bear named Billy Bob who was rocking the stage.
But even if none of that connects with you, it’s Nicholas Cage being dropped into the most insane story setup imaginable.
Like me, many of you have likely spotted this movie while searching for a horror film and thought “Oh yeah, that would be fun to watch!” You also probably skipped over it in favor of something with more substance, but have been drawn back to the title now that the Spooky Season is upon us.
Unfortunately, Willy’s Wonderland isn’t scary, funny, or hilariously inept. It’s just plain bad.
What It’s About
Here’s the film’s official description:
A quiet drifter is tricked into a janitorial job at the now condemned Willy’s Wonderland. The mundane tasks suddenly become an all-out fight for survival against wave after wave of demonic animatronics. Fists fly, kicks land, titans clash — and only one side will make it out alive.
In addition to being spot on, that logline sounds all types of awesome — especially when the movie also stars Nicholas Cage. After watching the trailer, it becomes even more difficult to accept that Willy’s Wonderland isn’t the shlocky masterpiece it was destined to be.
So yeah…there are some teenagers added to the mix, but there’s gotta be some cannon fodder for the monsters, right? Unfortunately, the teen group is hardly the worst thing about the film — although they certainly contribute to its downfall.
Let’s first take a look at the things Willy’s Wonderland did right before diving into all the bad stuff. This review will contain spoilers, although you can probably guess everything before it happens, anyway.
What Works
Wily’s Wonderland (Screen Media Films)
Going into the movie, most folks will likely be concerned with how the animatronics look. Thankfully, that turned out to be its strongest aspect. Whether it was puppets or actors in elaborate costuming, all the nightmare creatures were superb. Even their movements seemed authentic.
There was also some beautiful cinematography during the film’s quiet/tense movements. It got blown to smithereens once the fighting started, but at least some of the movie looked absolutely gorgeous.
From a storytelling standpoint, there’s a giant exposition dump before the film’s third act that’s significantly more interesting than the main narrative. The moment is helped by some cool/terrifying flashback sequences, but it still made me wish that was the movie we were watching instead.
What Didn’t Work
Wily’s Wonderland (Screen Media Films)
You may have noticed that I didn’t mention Nicholas Cage in my brief description of what worked about the film. That’s certainly no slight against the actor, who goes all out in every role he takes. Whether it’s Oscar-worthy material or D-grade junk, Cage doesn’t hold back.
In Willy’s Wonderland, however, he has no speaking lines. Like, at all.
Don’t get me wrong — a strange conceit like this can work, especially for an actor of Cage’s caliber. Unfortunately, it only serves to make things infuriately stupid. By the film’s end, Cage’s character (credited as The Janitor) never shows any hint of why he acts the way he does. Some of his more perplexing qualities include:
- Taking strictly scheduled breaks to drink soda and play pinball — even in the middle of a fight.
- Making sure his breaks are as long or short as necessary so he can run back in to save the day.
- Meticulously cleaning various rooms only to cause an even bigger mess than was there before.
- A staunch refusal to attack/destroy animatronic monsters until they engage him first.
- Riding off into the sunset with someone who appears to be a high school-aged girl.
Wily’s Wonderland (Screen Media Films)
According to Cage, The Janitor’s non-verbal nature was an artistic suggestion he made after reading the script. Before learning that, I genuinely wondered if it was some sort of Screen Actor’s Guild rule/loophole that’d allowed the producers to pay him less. Whatever the case, the desired effect of a creating mysterious and badass character is never achieved. Instead, The Janitor turns out to be a ridiculous enigma who isn’t worth rooting for.
In his defense, though, the supporting cast is a whole lot worse.
Aside from Emily Tosta as the secondary lead (who’s actually very good), every character is so over the top that they’re less believable than the animatronics. Part of this is due to them embracing any horror movie trope that crosses their path, but the main issue is the acting. It makes the actors from those crazy Christian movies look like Academy Award winners.
Wily’s Wonderland (Screen Media Films)
So with bad characters, poor acting, and a stunted narrative, that leaves us with the fight scenes between Cage and his giant furry foes. Unfortunately, the cinematography that looked so good during the film’s quiet moments became atrocious once the fists start flying.
Putting aside how easily Cage is able to defeat his enemies, the battles are choppy, repetitive, and grossly over-edited. As if that weren’t bad enough, each fight is more boring and disjointed than the last. By the time we get to the final showdown with Willy himself, it might as well play out as a storyboard.
All that said, there is one genuinely awesome moment where Cage curb stomps a gorilla on a urinal.
The Verdict
Even with lowered expectations and a strong desire to enjoy it, Willy’s Wonderland still managed to be a severe disappointment. That’s a real shame since it could have (and arguably should have) been a lot of fun.
Perhaps there will be a sequel or prequel that’s better, but it’s probably for the best if this franchise stays in the nostalgia horror trash heap.
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