Willy's Wonderland takes the same setup and makes it leaner, meaner and infinitely more fun.
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Willy's Wonderland is one of those movies that feels like it shouldn't work. It's basically an R-rated Five Nights at Freddy's knock-off that came out...before the branded movie actually did and features a Nic Cage performance, where his most distinctive feature (his wild vocal swings), aren't there. Because he doesn't speak. He silent protagonist's his way through this misadventure with creepy animatronics coming to life and murders them one by one. This shouldn't work. But it actually works better than the Five Nights at Freddy movie. So why? Well...I'd argue that its simplicity is its greatest asset.
The Setup
Nic Cage plays our silent hero known as "The Janitor" whose car breaks down in the small town of Hayesville, Nevada. Without money to pay for repairs, the Janitor is directed to take the night shift at the titular Willy's Wonderland. But while the business appears to be dead, the animatronics aren't...
There's a lot of reasons I like this movie more than the Five Nights at Freddys movie. And a lot of them are surface level preferences. The best example is the R-rating. I completely understand why Five Nights was a PG-13 movie. It's a horror game franchise that's very popular with young people and in particular kids, so you don't/didn't want to reduce your box office or the potential fan base. It's also not like there's a lot of actual violence in the games.
Five Nights at Freddy's aren't for everyone, but that's because the games are jump-scare factories that tend to be more fun to watch someone play vs. actually playing. It's cathartic and fun to watch a streamer you like play these (I myself have watched a couple of Smosh videos with Shayne and Amanda playing the games). But outside of the feeling that someone is about to jump out, scare you, and cause a game over, that's all the games have. They're not going to show your body being torn apart piece by piece.
So if you've got an R-rated movie. We can kill everyone. Man and machine. In gruesome over-the-top fashion. You know. For the kids.
And I gotta be honest. Even with a limited viewing experience of the Freddy's games, I would really want to f*** that creepy animals up as well and make them bleed their oil blood all over the place Samurai Jack style. That's proper wish fulfillment babyeee!
But again...that's surface level. I mean we've got one Nicolas Cage here. We're already pulling for an extreme. What else you got? How about a story that's not up it's own ass?
One of my biggest pet peeves about modern movie making, especially studio movie making, is how so many movies are obsessed with lore to either appease fans or to provide runway for a future sequel. And the Freddy's movie is loaded with this.
Our hero can't just be a guy trying to be a parent to his kid sister that comes across a terrifying situation. No he also needs to have a trauma that keeps coming back that ends up having some kind of connection to the pizzeria and the lore of the place. All while we're sanding off the edges of what turns out to be a story or child murder because....?
Willy's Wonderland bucks that right out of the gate with our protagonist played by Nic Cage. Everything we know about him is via action. He drives an old car. He seems willing to do work. Chugs energy drinks. And can fight like a motherf***er. He doesn't have some detailed back story or connection to this place (they save that for his eventual ally). He's just a drifter with a skill set to upset the paradigm this town has been operating under.
Even if the movie didn't tell what's going on, you'd be able to piece it together via context clues. They sent Nic Cage here for some messed up reason, because they obviously know that the animatronics are alive and homicidal. So maybe the animatronics and everyone involved in this should go down.
That simplicity, means the movie can focus on all the fun stuff which includes jump scare sequences with the animatronics attacking other people, Nic Cage going ham on these mos, and this general sense of "let's upset the status quo."
Or as the title indicates. Simpler is better.
Willy's Wonderland takes the same setup and makes it leaner, meaner and infinitely more fun.
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