Willy's Wonderland

A few years back, there was a unique horror game that hit the market called Five Nights at Freddy's, where you played as a night security guard at a Chuck E. Cheese style restaurant who has to survive the night pitted against the restaurant's animatronic characters who turn sentient and homicidal at night. Willy's Wonderland has a similar premise but adds in the ever dependable quirkiness of Nicolas Cage to the madness. 

A drifter known only as The Janitor (played by Nicolas Cage) is travelling when his car hits some spikes in the road, popping his tires and forcing him off the road. Soon, a tow truck arrives and gives him a tow into town. To get him back on the road, owner Tex Macadoo (played by Ric Reitz), offers to pay for the repairs to his car if he spends the night cleaning the local run down restaurant, Willy's Wonderland. Meanwhile, a local teen, Liz (played by Emily Tosta) is headed to Willy's with her friends with one intention: to burn it to the ground. The reason, as The Janitor soon discovers, is the animatronic characters housed within the restaurant are possessed and very homicidal. Upon arriving, Liz and her friends Chris (played by Kai Kadlec), Kathy (played by Caylee Cowan), Bob (played by Terayle Hill), Aaron (played by Christian Del Grosso) and Dan (played by Jonathan Mercedes) discover The Janitor is already inside and Liz finds a way in through the air vents to get him out before they torch the place. When she doesn't return, her friends soon follow and all find themselves similarly trapped in the restaurant (Tex locked and chained the doors shut and the windows are boarded up). On the upside though, The Janitor is a surprisingly good fighter and proves quite adept at taking out the murderous animatronic monsters. But will he be able to keep them safe until they can all find a way out of there safely? 

The film was written and directed by G.O Parsons, who finds the right balance between the utter lunacy of the concept and playing the material straight. The film has a very basic and straight forward plot that makes the film easy enough to enjoy. It certainly has all the usual horror movie tropes, sometimes to an eye-rolling degree, including the horny couple who decide the site of multiple mass murders and allegedly haunted is the perfect place to go at it with predictable results. Once all the characters are in the restaurant though, the film does stumble a bit as it falls into routine stalk and slash thrills as animatronic characters start offing the characters. Still, the film does tap into the inherent creepiness of those Chuck E. Cheese animatronic characters quite well and anyone who remembers them can take a certain amount of cathartic glee in watching Cage battle them one by one and then proceed to bag up the dismantled remains into large plastic bags and stack them by the entrance.

Nicolas Cage carries this film as the enigmatic main character known only as The Janitor. We really don't learn anything about the character aside from what the film shows us during the run time. Still, this is the perfect role for Cage who gives the quirky role his all. The Janitor doesn't utter a single line of dialogue for the entire film. In fact, aside from some screams as he attacks and dismantles the animatronic monstrosities, he is completely silent the entire movie. The character also adheres to a strict schedule throughout, taking regular breaks of playing an old pinball machine he finds in the kitchen while pounding energy drinks throughout the night. He crafts an interesting and quirky character who is unlike any other horror movie hero I have seen. The character is such a mystery but yet somehow Cage makes him compelling and interesting. Emily Tosta gives a decent performance as Liz and gets more interesting as the story goes on and the film reveals the connection both her and her guardian, Sheriff Lund (played by Beth Grant), have to Willy's Wonderland. Beth Grant also turns in a good performance as Sheriff Lund, adding a layer of moral conflict to her character as more is revealed about her character as well. 

Willy's Wonderland is a fun movie that certainly doesn't demand a lot from it's audience. It's the type of movie that would play well late at night, chilling on the couch with a cold drink when you're in the mood for some mindless, oddball fun. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I have a feeling this movie might grow into the type of cult film that many of Nicolas Cage's other films already have become. All you have to do is watch the trailer and you'll know right away if this is your kind of movie or not. For me, it definitely was.