Willy's Wonderland
SCREEN MEDIAWilly’s Wonderland is your everyday modern slasher. Providing enough creative kills for the few hardcore horror heads out there, director Kevin Lewis manages to coast along on an inevitable niche of the market. Nicolas Cage stars as a janitor tasked with cleaning up the titular children’s play area, a riff on the popular video game franchise Five Night’s at Freddy’s.
Every character in Lewis latest piece is expendable and unnecessary, aside from Cage who is granted more than a handful of bizarre so-bad-its-good moments. There is an obvious disconnect between the characters and what is going on in the scene. However, none of this really matters as the film plays out in a predictable fashion that makes it easy to guess who will be bumped off next. Considering how one-note and ineffective these characters are, it is no surprise that Lewis latches onto Cage as much as he can. Desperate to bring out the infamous rage-induced mania the stare has been known for in recent years.
Lewis’ direction and effect on the film is horrific, the lowest of the low when it comes to presentation. Lens flares are an abundant feature, presumably to hide how hollow the film really is. The film’s shoddy script is filled with barely any effect dialogue that results in a number of artificial and lacklustre scenes. When the only reason a gaggle of characters enter into the location of forgettable animatronics is to save an unnamed Nicolas Cage, who does nothing but dance, play pinball and harass robots, there is much to be tapped into. Seeing Cage bust a move and kick in some heads will rarely ever be a dull experience. All this however is buried beneath the constant lens flares and awkward Dutch angles.
Willy’s Wonderland had the potential to be a diamond in the rough amongst a backdrop of predictable and boring modern-day slasher movies. A terrible script, poor direction, and a whole heap of underwhelming performances will leave the audience wanting so much more. Cage being a somewhat modern-day cult icon is the only memorable factor in a film that fails to capture the horror and delight of the video game series it is based upon.