... Well, that’s a horrifying tagline.
Anyway, as soon as news first hit about this movie, with Nicholas Cage beating the holy hell out of animatronics in a former party restaurant for kids, the Internet was ablaze with comparisons between the premise of the film and the premise of the long-running video game series Five Nights At Freddy’s. To the point where that comparison seems to be the only thing anyone can talk about when it comes to the film itself. Now, I’m not exactly known for the hottest of takes in these reviews, and I admittedly did decide to check it out because a FNAF-esque movie experience is right up my alley, but do I really want to sit here and write out the same shit every other critic has repeated ad nauseum? Well... sort of.
See, while there’s all kinds of surface comparisons I could make between Willy’s Wonderland and FNAF (silent protagonist begins working for a rundown family-friendly eatery for nebulous reasons, discovers the animatronics are possessed and homicidal because of a string of murders at the same pizzeria, all of which needs to be cleansed with fire before anyone else gets killed), that’s not really where my mind went as far as actually comparing the two. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been jumpscared so many times by those fucking Fazbear animatronics that seeing even a facsimile get torn to pieces was orgasmic in its catharsis.
But the main reason it kept sticking in my head personally is how both forms of media work for the exact same reason: Learning from production limitations. With FNAF, the entire franchise was born out of unintentional creepiness, with creator Scott Cawthon trying to make an actual family-friendly game… but when everyone said that the character models were like Chuck E. Cheese from Hell, he ran with it and made a horror game. And with only still images and sound effects (rarely any actual movement in the initial games, just the implication of it), he made a franchise that has been itching for its own cinematic representation for a while now.
As for this film, rather than FNAF, it owes far more to the puppeteering creature features of Full Moon Features; Demonic Toys, Puppet Master, Gingerdead Man, that kind of thing. Knowing how much another horror-comedy about killer animatronics gave me vibes of that studio, I’m quite relieved that it works out far better here than it ever did for the Banana Splits. The trashy dialogue, the OTT gore, the reliance on practical effects, all shoved into a big bag with ‘take seriously at your own peril’ written on it in Sharpie. While it has a substantially higher budget than its influences, it holds onto the kind of filmmaking techniques that only come about through having to work with the micro-est of microbudgets; it works for the same reason as something like Rodriguez/Tarantino’s Grindhouse or even Peter Jackson’s studio features.
The visuals consistently nudge the line between trippy and fucking annoying, but it stays on the right side of watchable more times than not. Lots of lens flares, lots of tilted camera angles, plenty of flashing lights, and more than a few close-ups of Cage gritting his teeth as he paints the walls black with robot oil. The gore effects, both human and animatronic, are very good, and I like the way the editing and cinematography mimic the glitchy and stilted movement of the animatronics themselves. Bonus points for actually moving like animatronics and not just dudes in suits. It’s not all that jumpscare-heavy as the constant comparisons may lead some to believe, but the scares themselves work on that Halloween ‘giddiness over dread’ kind of horror.
And then there’s Cage… and I wasn’t being facetious when I referred to him as the silent protagonist; dude doesn’t say a single word throughout the entire film. But don’t think that means he’s any less crazed, though. The main joke of the film is that he is taking everything very seriously, and two different fronts. On the character front, he takes the job he’s haphazardly been given with utmost urgency, up and including taking his boss’ advice to take regular breaks... sometimes right in the middle of a fight scene.
And on the acting front, his man-of-no-words drifter looks like he’s in-between Western shootouts, but he’s just cleaning the pizzeria, downing energy drinks and playing a lot of pinball. He says nothing, and yet the determination on his face and in his body language, whether he’s sweeping floors, punching out robotic gorillas, or creating relationship goals with a pinball machine of all things, shows the man truly acting. It’s a rare instance of him underselling the role, and yet that only makes the whole thing even more surreal.
The other characters are… well, pretty standard for this kind of horror flick. You’ve got the townies that know more about what’s happening than they’re letting on, and you’ve got the dumb teenagers who get involved in the main action, only to get killed off one by one. Except, while they definitely stick to the standard, they aren’t nearly as annoying as I’ve come to expect from that standard. The townies are complicit in what’s going on, but when it’s revealed why (in one of two massive exposition dumps), it raises some surprising questions about what levels of death people are willing to put up with (oddly topical for a movie this bonkers).
And as for the teenagers, they’re annoying in as much as the average teenager is annoying, and they’ve certainly got more brains than the usual Rothian creation, seeing as the plan to burn everything down comes from them. Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how much I love Caylee Cowan as Kathy. She’s meant to be the airheaded bimbo (killed off mid-coitus, because Puritanism in horror is a hell of a drug), but she mostly reminded me that women who love horror movies are some of the coolest human beings on this Earth. Not that she’s a meta horror fan or anything like that, but she embodies the same willingness to embrace one’s inner freak and the world’s darkness with equal vigour that I’ve come to associate with that community.
This is the kind of B-movie I can absolutely get behind; I was grinning from ear to ear the whole time I was watching it. Cage is amazing once again, albeit differently from his usual wild-man howler ways, the concept is well-utilised, the dark humour on display works for the most part, and the fight scenes are gloriously over the top. Mileage will always vary on these kinds of cult releases, but for those able to enjoy the ludicrous for what it is (i.e. those who, upon learning that the film Evil Bong exists, would watch it for the title alone), I’d say it’s worth checking out.
And again, how genuinely terrifying is that tagline?
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