Willy's Wonderland

 It's kind of weird that it took people so many years to make a Five Night at Freddy's movie. The videogames, a series of streamer-friendly horror games that lock you after-hours in a gimmicky themed kid's restaurant infested with murderous animatronic mascots, has been a phenomenon for nearly ten years now (god, I feel old). A massive phenomenon a some time ago back, not so much now, but the premise is bound to draw in viewers 'for the lulz' or that have fondness for the material.

 Credit director Kevin Lewis and writer G. O. Parsons for, in time-honored B-movie tradition, rushing in and creating a very recognizable knock-off to fill the perceived void. While you're at it, give them credit for not completely half-assing it, too; this is categorically not a good movie, but it does put in some effort; it could have easily let the premise (and Nic Cage) pull all the weight instead.

 Nicholas Cage stars as a badass silent protagonist who, as the movie begins, is entrapped into spending a night as a janitor cleaning Willy's wonderland, an abandoned restaurant in the middle of nowhere.

 Despite the situation, he immediately sets to work with almost comic professionalism and competence. When when the dusty, zombie-like animatronic characters come to life and try to kill him... he brutally puts them down and continues cleaning.

 There's a b-plot about a young girl and her friends trying to save The Janitor and torch the restaurant. As you might guess, all they do is provide meat for the grinder. Liv (Emily Tosta), the co-protagonist, is basically an exposition engine whose main (and only) traits are being head-strong and heroic; all her friends are immediately forgettable except for Kathy (Caylee Cowan) who is visually introduced as an obvious airhead/mean girl, but immediately proves to be much more interesting. I liked her, though the script gives her next to nothing to do before she decides to bone her boyfriend in the most dangerous place possible with foreseeable results.

 Willy's Wonderland is a horror/action/comedy hybrid, and though it's got some pretty broad jokes the tone is kept relatively grim. That's commendable, but the problem is that it also happens to be fucking terrible at both horror and action. Any attempts at scares are brought low by a complete lack of originality, a cheesy direct-to-video vibe, and an inability to produce any tension. Meanwhile, the shoddy budget and the crew's inexperience also kill off any hopes of the action being decent - shoddy camera work, choppy editing and lack of choreography will, surprise surprise, have that effect. On top of that the cinematography looks like ass, working in a lot of oh-so-trendy desaturated colors and overexposed lighting in what looks like an attempt to reproduce the grimy, thankfully outdated horror aesthetics from the 00s.

 The script and visual storytelling don't help any. The dialog is trite and on-the-nose (the line "He's not trapped in there with them, they're trapped in there with him!" is deployed unironically) and the exposition is laughable. The camera work has a habit of underlining the obvious: when the protagonist notices a message board full of missing people posters, a classic horror beat, you can bet the camera's not going to leave it at that - it has to zoom in with a 'whoosh' on individual posters. The crew obviously knows their action and horror movie tropes, but (and this is a very VoD trait) they seem content with imitating the hackiest ones in the tackiest way possible.

 The horror elements, as mentioned, are piss-poor. It's impossible to care about any of the characters or the plot, so all the deaths feel like a bad Friday the 13th knock-off. And they're all weirdly perfunctory, barely registering... The animatronics get far grislier deaths than any of the humans do.

 The monsters are a mixed bag - some look pretty good, like an actual ostrich robot that The Janitor slaps around for a bit, but others just look like cheap suits (a gorilla, or a fairy with a shoddy papier-maché mask). Most do very poorly whenever they have to interact with any live action components.

 The main exception to the general crappitude of the movie is the music provided by a band called Émoi - a ton of varied, very believable kid's songs for the animatronics to perform, all well crafted and professional-sounding. They also do a decent synthwave song (with lyrics about the movie!) for Nic Cage to let fly his freak flag to at one point. It's an obvious bid to tap into his wilder side and get a meme-worthy moment.

 It's not very successful; Cage is (as always) a pro, and plays a fun angry badass even when he doesn't seem to be very engaged. The script's one strength is in knowing how to use him, if not very effectively, and scores a couple of laughs. But his character doesn't make a lot of sense, especially one major 'wacky' moment that kind of broke the movie for me. Making him completely silent is a bold choice, though it robs him of the chance to goof around with line readings. Oh well.

 There are some good moments. At one point Cage tears off a robot ostrich's head and holds it up high, spine dangling, in an obvious but fun homage. I also loved -loved- a scene where he stares down a cartoon weasel, complete with slow zoom and an ominous soundtrack:

YESSSSSSS

 A truly great scene that perfectly justifies the potential of the movie's mix of genre elements and deeply silly premise. It's a shame the film never manages to get even close to being that good again.