Movie Review: 'Willy's Wonderland'

Willy’s Wonderland piles absurdity on top of absurdity and in wonderfully, violently, crazy fashion. That this is a movie starring Nicolas Cage is something that should not surprise anyone. That Cage doesn’t utter a single line of dialogue, outside of an occasional grunt to signify effort, is surprising. Cage’s manic energy is often best employed when he’s wailing like a banshee or saying something strangely or hauntingly poignant. Without words in Willy’s Wonderland the famed personality somehow still shines through and is somehow as entertaining as ever.

Willy’s Wonderland stars Cage as a drifter who blows all four the tires on his Camaro, just outside of a small southern town. The town has no internet or ATM and since Cage’s drifter has no cash, a deal is made. The garage owner and tow truck driver sets up Cage with a job at Willy’s Wonderland, a long time abandoned themed restaurant chain. Cage’s gig is to clean the place up and, in exchange, have his car repaired and returned to him the following morning.

In reality, the lonesome drifter is being set up as a human sacrifice. The animatronic rodent mascots of Willy’s Wonderland are actually serial killers who used a Satanic ritual to transfer their souls to the robot rodents. Every month, the town sends in random drifters to clean Willy’s Wonderland and, more importantly, be eaten by the serial Satanists. Somehow, Cage’s drifter is entirely unfazed when he finds out the animatronic characters come to life and begin to try and kill him.

One by one, the drifter, credited on IMDB as ‘The Janitor,’ wipes out another mascot, bags them up in a trash bag and cleans up the mess from the fight. The Janitor’s obsession with actually cleaning up Willy’s Wonderland and sticking to the schedule he set for himself to finish the work is a terrific running gag in Willy’s Wonderland. A great example of this comes when a group of teens break into Willy’s to try and save The Janitor who wants nothing to do with their help.

Each of the teenagers is quickly picked off by the animatronic beasts until only one is left. She’s lucky to have The Janitor by her side as she directly confronts one of the demon possessed mascots until a smartphone alarm sounds and The Janitor leaves to take his planned break from work. The teen is left to her own devices. This little detail, this quirk of The Janitor being so obsessively dedicated to his task and schedule takes on an absurd comic dimension all its own.

By the end of Willy’s Wonderland seeing if The Janitor was actually going to finish cleaning Willy’s Wonderland or have it burned to the ground becomes even more interesting and exciting than whether or not the teenager (Emily Tosta), her adopted mother (Beth Grant), or a new in town visiting cop (David Sheftell), will survive this night. Cage invests such importance in his schedule, his tasks that his deeply held intention to complete his cleaning tasks takes on a thrill that probably doesn’t translate into this review.

Willy’s Wonderland thrives on ever increasing absurdity and I was completely wrapped up in every outlandish twist and turn. When Cage battles two of the demon possessed mechanical mascots to the tune of "Head, Shoulder, Knees, and Toes," I laughed so hard it physically hurt. I had to pause the movie to recover a little before I could continue. And that's not even the end of Willy's Wonderland. You must see for yourself how the movie keeps upping that ante.

Meanwhile, Cage's mutism also heightens the ever increasing insanity. Without saying a word, Cage turns what could be an exercise in a far too knowing brand of ironic detachment into an actorly exercise in craftsmanship. Cage treats not speaking as this character as a way of sharpening his other actorly tools and this choice takes what could be a forgettably odd slasher movie into a work of absurdist outsider art.

Nicolas Cage has a reputation for seizing on a particular aspect of a character and hyper-focusing on that aspect as his main motivation for playing the character. In Peggy Sue Got Married, for instance, Cage insisted that his character had this odd vocal affectation and rather than just play the character straight, everything for Cage was about making sure he maintained that voice, even to the detriment of the movie. His Uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, the director of Peggy Sue Got Married, almost fired Cage over the voice until he was talked into letting Cage do his thing.

Similarly, in Con Air, though it was nowhere to be found in the script, Cage insisted on a southern accent. Why? Who knows, he just decided the character was from the south and set about to do a southern accent. He sounds ridiculous, but he did it and Con Air still became a massive worldwide blockbuster. It's not hard to imagine then that Cage perhaps insisted on playing The Janitor in Willy's Wonderland as a mute. I can't prove that is the truth but it is a tantalizing urban legend and it gives an already audacious movie an even kinkier backstory and I love that.

Willy's Wonderland is available now for Hulu subscribers.