We’ve been talking a lot about final girls on my page recently, and I have about eighty more I want to talk about, but I figured today we could switch gears and talk about something, different, and completely out of left field.
It involves animatronics, a loner employee, and a demonic pact….you guessed it, we’re talking about Willy’s Wonderland, the only movie about demonic animatronics that I acknowledge (I’m not brave enough to write a FNAF review. Just know that, despite being Matthew Lillard trash number one, that movie sucks ass.) Willy’s Wonderland tells the story of The Janitor (Nicolas Cage), a drifter who takes up a job as a janitor in abandoned Willy’s Wonderland in order to pay for his broken down vehicle. What he doesn’t know, however, is that he is a sacrifice to the demonic spirits that inhabit the animatronics in order to appease them from murdering the whole town. What THEY don’t know is The Janitor is a demon robot killing fucking machine, and for the rest of the movie it is a robot bloodbath as The Janitor not only keeps his word about keeping the restaurant spotless, but destroys these demonic robots. It is a wild ride from start to finish.
While Willy’s Wonderland is a very, very obvious cash grab at Five Nights at Freddy’s fame, it is so much better than the official FNAF movie. As someone who hates gratuitous violence, there is something about this movie that is so immersive I hardly even notice. Cage, truly, is giving the performance of his life, mostly silent throughout the film as he just tries to clean this stupid abandoned restaurant. We get hints of a backstory, but nothing explicit, and frankly, the audience doesn’t need to know how the Janitor got these skills. We don’t even have to know his name. Cage is so fun, calm, and only bothered when they stain his shirt (a bit in the film, where he constantly puts on a new Willy’s Wonderland shirt after the previous is destroyed in a fight). He is so easy to root for throughout the movie, I audibly cheered multiple times The robots attempting to kill him really serve as this annoying inconvenience. While he struggles to fight them, The Janitor also easily snaps their necks or straight up rips the robots’ heads off of their bodies. The fight scenes in Willy’s Wonderland are wild, brilliantly choreographed with some of the best lighting I have ever seen; one of my favourite scenes in particular being an epic fight between Ozzie Ostrich and The Janitor, weaponized only with his mop.
Your imagination cannot even fathom the amazingness that the scene entails.
And while I think I would be okay with a ninety minute film of Cage just annihilating these creations, there are supporting characters in this and they are great. The main is Liv, a young delinquent in town whose guardian is the town sheriff, Lund. Liv and her friends attempt to break in to burn the place down, and while trying to save the Janitor, they all get trapped inside. Liv is such a great supporting character because her sole motivation is burning this place to the ground and saving the Janitor, who constantly waves her off as a nuisance as he tries to complete his task of cleaning the restaurant. Liv is played by Emily Tosta, and the father-daughter relationship that develops between her and the Janitor is incredibly sweet. After all of her friends are brutally murdered, she truly is alone in the world, as is he. There’s a kinship there that really is genuine and heartfelt, even more so when the two of them are surrounded by possessed animatronics, with the souls possessing these robots belonging to former cannibalistic cult members. Cage and Tosta are great leads, bringing the fun badassery this film demands. Even as the two drive off into the sunset, all the villains dead, they still manage to kick robot ass when they run over a, somehow still alive, Tito Turtle. I love movies like this, where they quash a sequel and give audiences that ‘fuck yeah’ they wanted from the movie.
The human twist villains as well are GREAT and over the top, especially former Willy’s Wonderland owner, Tex Macadoo (Ric Reitz) and Sheriff Eloise Lund (Beth Grant). They are cartoonishly evil and misguided, and while audiences can have a little empathy for them, watching them mercilessly get torn apart by the robots or fucking BLOWN UP in their car when one of the demons goes out in a murder/suicide fire (WILD, this movie is wild) is pretty funny in the context of the film.
I will say, one thing stops Willy’s Wonderland from being a perfect film, and that is that Liv’s friend Kathy (Caylee Cowan) dies, which I hate as a Caylee Cowan fan. Cowan is the coolest person alive and I want her in every movie and she was not in Willy’s Wonderland long enough and could have also joined Liv and the Janitor in their little found family. But other than that, this movie is a fun ride. If you’re like me and were severely underwhelmed by FNAF, I think this movie is what you actually wanted. An adult take on the idea of the teenybopper horror game, Willy’s Wonderland is fun, action packed, funny, and heartfelt. The demon spirits are outlandishly evil, the Janitor is a great silent hero, and Liv is the perfect foil because she’s badass with a lot of heart.
I noticed, while writing this, I swear more than I have for past few reviews, and I think that is because this movie made ME feel like a total badass. I feel empowered in a way I haven’t felt since I saw Wonder Woman cross no man’s land. Willy’s Wonderland, truly, is for those who just want to have fun at movies and don’t mind a little bloodshed…or a lot of robot bloodshed.