While Scott Cawthon’s smash hit Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) didn’t invent the horror subgenre of killer animatronics originally designed for amusement, one need only look at Michael Crichton’s 1973 film Westworld to see where the seeds were truly planted, it’s pretty safe to say that the runaway success of the game brought this concept to new heights, leading to other media utilizing it inevitably being compared with the series. In the time during the official FNAF film’s rocky development came a pair of films with their own takes on the genre, the first being the infamous The Banana Splits Movie, whose background details have raised suspicion of reusing a rejected FNAF movie screenplay for a quick cash grab. The second, Willy’s Wonderland, is an independent project made on a shoestring budget originally slated for release in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to move to 2021 instead, gaining attention for starring Nicolas Cage and putting its own unique twist on the subgenre. With it being a horror film and me having a low threshold for the genre, I hesitated at first to watch it even after it piqued my curiosity, only to finally watch it in preparation for the then-upcoming FNAF film and finding myself thoroughly enjoying it for what it is.
