Can a Five Night’s At Freddy’s inspired horror film starring Nicolas Cage be great? I don’t see why not. Is Willy’s Wonderland that film? Hell no.

Cage plays a silent loner who, in return for repairs to his car, agrees to spend a night cleaning an abandoned family fun centre, oblivious to the fact that the animatronics there are possessed.

The Characters

Cage’s protagonist is useless. He felt like he was plucked from a different script. We know no more about him at the end than we do at the beginning. He is mute, he loves his car and likes energy drinks. That’s it. He has no arc of any kind. He’s somehow able to beat up demonic animatronics with minimal effort, which due to poor cinematography and costumes, isn’t as fun as it sounds. This character is our protagonist and we get nothing from him, not even a glorious Cage performance.

The other characters have a lot more potential in that they bring some legitimate conflict to the plot. Intercut with Cage’s janitorial odyssey is a subplot concerning a group of teens planning to burn down Willy’s Wonderland. They have a connection to the place at least, which is so much more than what Cage’s character provides. Most of them are your stereotypical slasher film victims (the jock, the nerd, the whore). The leader of the group however, a girl called Liv, has a very personal history with the rundown building and, maybe if written better, could’ve been an engaging protagonist. Unfortunately, the script that’s been brought to screen doesn’t do that. The teens are certainly more entertaining than Cage’s character but they fail to attract any interest or empathy.

With characters this poorly written you’d hope that the Five Nights at Freddy’s setup would result in some fun scenes but you’d be disappointed because as I stated before, the costumes for the animatronics and the way they’re shot are just so abysmal. They’re clearly guys in suits and whenever they’re fighting, the camera’s so shaky you can barely see them.

The Exposition

As if there wasn’t enough wrong with the script, the way the film conveys exposition is so poor and jarring I have to dedicate a whole section to it. Characters’ knowledge of Willy’s Wonderland is revealed in long awkward monologues uttered during conversation, flashbacks accompanying them. One character will ask another what they know about Willy’s and all of a sudden, they become the narrator of a prologue, using terminology you’d read in an opening title crawl, speaking as if the other isn’t there. Dramatizing exposition is harder than it sounds, I understand that but why weren’t these monologues and flashbacks woven together and put at the beginning as a prologue? The teens know most of the information when we meet them, why shouldn’t the audience be as informed? Well, I know why. It’s because none of the teens are the main character. The silent stranger played be Nicolas Cage who learns nothing, does nothing and brings nothing is.

I look at the premise, the characters and the backstory of Willy’s Wonderland and think of the many things the film could’ve been, all of them more interesting than what the film is. I am legitimately curious about what the writer and director had in mind when conceiving the film. The result could’ve just been due to budget and time as with a lot of indie films or it could’ve been deliberate, which would just make the film even worse.

If the idea of Nicolas Cage beating up Five Nights at Freddy’s-like animatronics sounds like a good watch to you, then nothing I can say can persuade you to avoid it. To anyone else, I can’t pan this film enough. Its premise is the only thing good about Willy’s Wonderland. Its execution however, from its poorly written characters to its jarring exposition, from its muddled cinematography to its cheap costumes, is a multi-layered failure.

I give Willy’s Wonderland an awful 2 out of 10.