Review of Willy's Wonderland (2021) by Thequietgamer — 24 Feb 2021

Like The Banana Splits Movie before it, this is another case of someone beating the long in development Five Nights at Freddy's adaptation to the punch. Making me wonder if Blumhouse shouldn't just shelve the project for good as the bar has been set about as high as one could reasonably expect a film about killer animatronics to be here. Seriously, this would be a tough act to follow. You're getting exactly what you would expect from the premise. It's like someone played a FNaF game, asked themselves why the player can't just smash the deranged pizza parlor mascots to bits, and proceeded to make a movie where that actually happens starring Nicolas Cage. It's mechatronic puppets may not have the same amount of personality as their obvious inspirations and there are perhaps too many montages of Cage just cleaning stuff, but it's so much fun watching its star be his typical weird self despite never saying a word since the whole thing makes no bones about being a Chuck E. Cheese-y B-movie and puts the robo-bashing front and center. Plus, I was actually impressed with what they came up with for the story even if it was delivered in two big exposition dumps.

Honestly, I could see this having some franchise potential. I would be completely onboard with Cage reprising this role, drifting into another town, and beating the living crap out of whatever ridiculous monstrosities are holding it hostage. Especially if we got to learn more about the silent protagonist along the way. All they would have to do is lower the cost of entry. Considering Willy's knows exactly what it's trying to be and how to satisfy its target audience, the only real problem it has is its pricetag. $20 to stream this (or anything for that matter) is just ridiculous, and I like the darn thing! So unless you can find it for free online like I did, hold out for a cheaper DVD release or something. It's good, but not worth shelling out that kind of cash for in the middle of a freaking pandemic.

7.