Nicolas Cage Keeps Quiet.

As an avid horror lover of not only the classics but someone who gives chances to something new, old movies that seem like they may be worth a viewing or will browse amongst the horror section of the many movie streaming services I've subscribed to; I stumbled across something interesting.

I notice in passing of the cover photo of the movie that it looks like Nicolas Cage. I think he's a great actor, so I scroll back. Yep, that's him, the one and only. This should be interesting. Not only is it a Nic Cage movie but it's a horror movie. Win? Win?

I read the description: basically along the lines of animatronic characters who are cursed by the satanic ritual of some serial killer who used this child's play place to lure his victims and prey on mostly innocent children. Think Chuck E. Cheese gone bad. So I click play to the movie "Willy's Wonderland."

It automatically starts off as an attention catcher, a teenage girl, Liv pouring gasoline and getting ready to light a fire. The Sheriff shows up and takes her, ends up cuffing her to a heater in a trailer. While in the back of the police car she passes a man driving with a passenger who is wearing dark glasses but they make some sort of eye contact and stare at each other. Liv automatically knows this guy is doomed. Her friends rescue her from the trailer and they make their way back to the original place of the arson attempt.

Nicolas Cage's character was the passenger. Classic horror story situation. Some psycho rednecks in a small town set-up a trap for the main character's car to break down. In this case it was road spikes. They offer assistance and take the main character somewhere. In this movie, the mechanic is willing to fix the tires on the car. Nicolas Cage's character pulls out his credit card. Shocker, shocker, they don't take credit cards and guess what? The ATM is broken. The mechanic just happens to know someone who would pay for the tires on the car if Nicolas Cage's character does some light cleaning at a place overnight and the car will be returned in the morning. This guy is the guy who he originally got a ride with in the first place.

The man gives some bullshit spiel about him wanting to open the place back up. The two shake hands on the agreement and Nic Cage enters this "Willy's Wonderland". He gets chained inside but doesn't know this until later in the film. He starts cleaning and in some form of comical sense takes his breaks like clock-work throughout his stay there. Always drinks a pop and plays a round of pin-ball. Then back to work. There is an attack attempt by one of the animatronic characters, in typical Nic Cage action movie fashion he takes this character out. Continues cleaning just as calmly as he started, does his same round of breaks, pop and pin-ball, takes out an animatronic gorilla in the midst of cleaning a restroom. After the second murdering of a used to be kid's character Liv and her group of friends try to break into the fun center in an attempt to save the main character. She wants to burn the place down but cannot justify herself in doing so with a man inside. They all end up inside purposely and accidentally and realize that their attempt to save this man is impractical as he's already destroyed 2 of these characters. But nevertheless they try but he will not leave as he has some unfinished business in his deal to clean up the place. Some people die as in every horror movie, but I'm not going to say who.

In an attempted call to 911 from one of Liv's friends, Chris, the Sheriff hangs up on him. But it is also found out during this scene about the satanic ritual from the serial killer and his following committing suicide and transferring their souls into these animatronic characters. But they're hungry and are out for human flesh. Liv's parents were killed when she was young by these creatures and she was left at the police station in which she was now in the care of the Sheriff. They boarded up Willy's in an attempt to keep the creatures inside hoping they would just die off but they started escaping and killing the town's people. So the town basically made a deal with the devil and agreed to feed the demented beast in exchange for them not killing anymore of their people. The only way to do this? Set-up traps for people passing through and come up with an agreement for them to get their vehicle fixed or a place to stay in exchange for cleaning. The monsters are fed and the town's people are left alone. What they didn't account for, Nicolas Cage coming in cleaning up the whole place while mostly calmly destroying possessed animatronic characters.

Reason for not putting a name to Nicolas Cage's character? He does not have one. This made the movie all that more interesting in my opinion because throughout the entire movie he does not speak one word, some grunts during the fights but not one word! Yet, he is the star character whose main focus is getting the place cleaned up so he can get his car back and ends up defeating these bloodthirsty children's characters in the process.