Willy's Wonderland.
Directed by Kevin Lewis.
Starring Nicolas Cage, Emily Tosta, Ric Reitz, Chris Warner, Caylee Cowan and Beth Grant. Available on demand. 88 mins
The path trodden by Nicolas Cage isn't always a particularly fruitful or dignified one, but it is his path and his alone. Right from the very beginning he has pushed and wriggled to expand the boundaries of acting and take it beyond the diktats of realism. For the last decade or so he's more or less shunned the mainstream and become his own genre. Like a Drunk History, he'll be the rogue element in a small budget genre piece. The films would sometimes play along with him, but that would usually end badly with them sprawling in the ditch of wacky. Willy's Wonderland might be the first film to externalise the Cage aesthetic, translating his impressionistic anti-realist acting style into a form of anti-drama.
Or maybe it is a cry for help.
It's a horror in which a nameless man, Cage, passing through a small town gets tricked and coerced into spending the night being the janitor in a haunted children's themed play centre. Locked in he'll have to try and survive the night with eight killer animatronic figures, led by Willy the Weasel. Imagine robotic killer Banana Splits. Anybody else would be flustered by this turn of events but Cage takes it all in his stride. One by one he'll dispatch the figures that attack him with his bare hands, have an energy drink, then get back to his cleaning.
The Cage gimmick in this film is not to speak. That's exactly the kind of gonzo acting challenge you'd expect of Cage, more pushing at the boundaries. It could equally though be seen as evidence of a man who'd had enough of it all. The way Willy's Wonderland is structured it makes it seem like Cage is in denial about being in the film. Halfway through some idiot teenagers turn up to do what idiot teenagers do in horror movies and he brusquely rebuffs their attempts to interact with him. You could interpret this as the actions of a man who, at this point in the moronic low budget movie cycle he finds himself stuck in, has decided to just keep his head down and not engage with his surroundings in the hope that eventually this will all go away.
The film itself takes a similarly high handed approach. As low budget horror films go, it is very proficiently made. Only one scene falls flat – where a handcuffed Cage takes on two of figures to a line dancing country version of the nursey rhyme Heads and Shoulders, Knees and Toes. It sets itself up as ThisizgonnabeclassicCage but then edits out any thing of interest. Apart from that though you couldn't find much fault with it technically. The costumes are striking, the figures move really well and some of the scenes are beautifully lit.
But even Nicolas Cage horror films and thriller have to go through the motions of offering suspense and tension, of pretending to care, but Cage's fights with the demonic figures are utterly perfunctory. The send-up of teen horror movie conventions is whipped through like they're a chore. Audiences are now accustomed to laughing at the excesses and absurdities of Nicolas Cage movies but Willy's Wonderland is so defensive about being the witting rather than unwitting butt of the joke, it risks closing off most of the fun. The film looks like he has aspirations for spawning some sequels but it may be too arch for audiences to connect with.
So, is it any good? Who knows? At this point in his career, it's kind of irrelevant.
Directed by Kevin Lewis.
Starring Nicolas Cage, Emily Tosta, Ric Reitz, Chris Warner, Caylee Cowan and Beth Grant. Available on demand. 88 mins
The path trodden by Nicolas Cage isn't always a particularly fruitful or dignified one, but it is his path and his alone. Right from the very beginning he has pushed and wriggled to expand the boundaries of acting and take it beyond the diktats of realism. For the last decade or so he's more or less shunned the mainstream and become his own genre. Like a Drunk History, he'll be the rogue element in a small budget genre piece. The films would sometimes play along with him, but that would usually end badly with them sprawling in the ditch of wacky. Willy's Wonderland might be the first film to externalise the Cage aesthetic, translating his impressionistic anti-realist acting style into a form of anti-drama.
Or maybe it is a cry for help.
It's a horror in which a nameless man, Cage, passing through a small town gets tricked and coerced into spending the night being the janitor in a haunted children's themed play centre. Locked in he'll have to try and survive the night with eight killer animatronic figures, led by Willy the Weasel. Imagine robotic killer Banana Splits. Anybody else would be flustered by this turn of events but Cage takes it all in his stride. One by one he'll dispatch the figures that attack him with his bare hands, have an energy drink, then get back to his cleaning.
The Cage gimmick in this film is not to speak. That's exactly the kind of gonzo acting challenge you'd expect of Cage, more pushing at the boundaries. It could equally though be seen as evidence of a man who'd had enough of it all. The way Willy's Wonderland is structured it makes it seem like Cage is in denial about being in the film. Halfway through some idiot teenagers turn up to do what idiot teenagers do in horror movies and he brusquely rebuffs their attempts to interact with him. You could interpret this as the actions of a man who, at this point in the moronic low budget movie cycle he finds himself stuck in, has decided to just keep his head down and not engage with his surroundings in the hope that eventually this will all go away.
The film itself takes a similarly high handed approach. As low budget horror films go, it is very proficiently made. Only one scene falls flat – where a handcuffed Cage takes on two of figures to a line dancing country version of the nursey rhyme Heads and Shoulders, Knees and Toes. It sets itself up as ThisizgonnabeclassicCage but then edits out any thing of interest. Apart from that though you couldn't find much fault with it technically. The costumes are striking, the figures move really well and some of the scenes are beautifully lit.
But even Nicolas Cage horror films and thriller have to go through the motions of offering suspense and tension, of pretending to care, but Cage's fights with the demonic figures are utterly perfunctory. The send-up of teen horror movie conventions is whipped through like they're a chore. Audiences are now accustomed to laughing at the excesses and absurdities of Nicolas Cage movies but Willy's Wonderland is so defensive about being the witting rather than unwitting butt of the joke, it risks closing off most of the fun. The film looks like he has aspirations for spawning some sequels but it may be too arch for audiences to connect with.
So, is it any good? Who knows? At this point in his career, it's kind of irrelevant.
