Willy's Wonderland

 "Willy's Wonderland" (2021, Kevin Lewis, Landmark Studio Group, Baffin Media Ltd., Saturn Films, JD Entertainment, Landafar Entertainment).

A man of few, or actually no, words (Nicolas Cage) takes a job as a janitor at an abandoned family entertainment restaurant called "Willy's Wonderland" in order to pay for repairs to his car which have left him otherwise stranded in a small American town. 

The restaurant hosts some dilapidated animatronics including Willy the Weasel, Arty Alligator, Cammy Chameleon, Ozzie Ostrich, Tito Turtle, Knighty Knight, Gus Gorilla, and Siren Sara. The Janitor begins his long night shift taking short breaks to play a pinball machine and drink some energy drinks as well as occasionally change shirt. But it isn't long before he comes to learn that the animatronic animals are alive and blood thirsty.

After doing battle with one of the animatronics, the Janitor goes dutifully back to his chores, but is soon interrupted by a group of teens lead by Liv (Emily Tosta) who is hellbent on ending Willy's Wonderland's blight on the small town after her own ill-fated experience at the restaurant. 

Extremely reminiscent of the "Five Nights at Freddy's" games (which, if you're unfamiliar, are definitely worth seeking out), "Willy's Wonderland" couples an industrious protagonist just trying to do his job in spite of a menagerie of killer animatronics, with perhaps, understandably, a little less intrigue than the games. 

The premise is fun and Cage delivers an entertaining performance as the silent, straight faced Janitor, just dealing with things as they come up. 

The action does become a little samey and perhaps 8 animatronics was a little many, however, the film doesn't outstay its welcome at 88 minutes of run time and certainly delivers a fun and innovative collection of kills. 

Definitely worth checking out. 

[Image: Saturn Films, et al]

Hani

Color Out of Space (2019)

"Color Out of Space" (2019, Richard Stanley, SpectreVision, RLJE Films) is an adaptation of the short story of the same title by H.P. Lovecraft.


Theresa (Joely Richardson) and Nathan Gardner (Nicolas Cage) move their family into a large rural house while Theresa is recovering from cancer. The rural location, however, is meddling with Theresa's work and their kids; Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), Jack (Julian Hilliard) and Benny (Brendan Meyer) are still adapting to the change. Lavinia also makes the acquaintance of Ward (Elliot Knight), a hydrologist doing a survey of the water table in the area.


One night a brilliantly coloured meteor hits nearby, resulting in a strange light around the area and the eruption of bright and alien vegetation. The family begin to experience further strange behaviours amongst themselves and their animals and things begin to become more and more alien.


A bit of a slow start delivers an eventual impressive pay off as things wind up and up throughout the run time. With some fun and disturbing body horror, a great amount of Lovecraft's work still in there and some beautiful and eerie visuals, the whole film is both entertaining and pretty.


The only factor that didn't seem to work for me was Nicolas Cage as the dad. The whole rest of the family seem to gel so well together as a believable unit but his style and tendency towards OTT acting felt out of place and jarring in what was otherwise a fantastic fantasy horror.

[Image: SpectreVision, et al]

Hani

Mandy

"Mandy" (2018, Panos Cosmatos, Spectrevision, Umedia, XYZ Films, RLJE Films) is an arthouse horror thriller starring Nicolas Cage.



Set in the 80s, we meet logger Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) and his fantasy artist and gas station attendant girlfriend, Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough) at their lakeside cabin.


A cult calling themselves Children of the New Dawn along with the help of a drugged-up, cannibalistic biker gang called The Black Skulls, kidnap Mandy for their leader, Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache). However, Mandy rejects Sand and he instead burns her alive in front of Red.


Red then goes on a vengeful rampage armed with a special crossbow, a handmade axe and a whole tonne of hallucinogenic drugs... Oh, and there's a chainsaw battle also.


For me, the description sounded a lot better than the finished article. While I don't dislike Nicolas Cage, there's only so much entertainment I can glean from the famous Cage Rage - and this film is chalk full of it. The plot is pretty simple and the imagery is often really creative but it's all done with a kind of pretentious smirk and a lot of colour filters and starts to wear after a while. Some scenes are fantastically metal but the style likes to jump all over the place. For a film where all the characters are on drugs, however, I guess this makes sense. I guess that's also true for the odd dialogue...


The film takes a while to get started, and when it finally does it jumps off the deep end in an impressive way. If it had been cheesier, it would have been superb. But the arthouse pretention keeps this for being a hit for me.

[Image: Spectrevision, et al]

Hani