In films like that one, Cage fully honed his niche as a presentational actor, someone who, either through direct notice or mannerisms, acknowledges that they’re playing directly to an expectant audience.

Willy’s Wonderland review – Nicolas Cage cleans up in gory

And that circle of awareness — that unique relationship he has with his own reputation and the fans who show up to see how he’ll live up to it — is what makes every new year of his career stand out. Nicolas Cage was instrumental in ensuring his new film Willy’s Wonderland was full of his favourite animals.Attention has now turned to Willy’s Wonderland, a 2021 movie starring Nic as The Janitor, who is pitted against animatronic animals during a wild night of survival. It’s a waking nightmare made of gore, suffering, and hallucinatory slow-mo, soundtracked by Cage’s inchoate howls of rage and grief over his lost love Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). However, to its credit, the film doesn’t take itself in the slightest bit seriously, because with a premise like that, really how could it? First came Kevin Lewis’ Willy’s Wonderland, then Michael Sarnoski’s Pig, and finally, Cage brought the year home in Sion Sono’s Prisoners of the Ghostland.

Willy Cage — The Party Monster

Drew Barrymore Breaks Down In Tears For The 2nd Time This Week On 'Drew Barrymore Show' — And It's Only Wednesday! The spiritual relative of Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s horror-game series, Willy’s Wonderland challenges Cage to forgo his voice, long considered his best asset.By now, Cage is such a master of his style that his viewers know he’s speaking to them and to their expectations of him, even when he doesn’t appear to be. When he addresses Derek, he stares just beyond the cinematographer’s lens as if he’s talking past Derek to us, because we have just as much need to hear what Rob has to say about integrity and self-worth. He grunts and growls, grimaces and glares, in turn battering the monsters with mop handles and dismembering them with his bare hands, unbothered by spraying oil as he goes about his work.

Nicolas Cage wanted his new horror film changed so it had Nicolas Cage wanted his new horror film changed so it had

It’s also a blip on Prisoners of the Ghostland’s radar, the moment that makes the movie a must-watch, even though it doesn’t exactly justify the rest of the story.Cage portrays The Janitor in what Entertainment Weekly has described as “2021’s first cult movie”, which follows the restaurant cleaner battling a series of giant animatronic creatures while on shift. Cage chooses his moments wisely, stretching out his enunciation of “testicle” from three syllables to what feels like a whole sentence, crescendoing in a shriek: “Test-ih-cuuuull! The calibrated bizarreness of Prisoners of the Ghostland and Willy’s Wonderland crown Sarnoski’s Pig as the most conventional of Cage’s 2021 trifecta. The great character actor Beth Grant ( Mrs Sometimes I Doubt Your Commitment to Sparkle Motion in Donnie Darko) plays the local sheriff who gets to give the big explication monologue about the building’s history, real estate deals and satanic possession.

Cage 2021 was an even wilder year than usual for Nicolas Cage

As a silent stranger stranded in a made-up dump in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada, Cage, aka “the Janitor,” goes toe-to-toe with bloodthirsty animatronic beasts in a family entertainment center-cum-abbatoir, once shut down on account of a rash of child murders, and now in the midst of an ill-advised renovation by macho entrepreneur Tex Macadoo (Ric Reitz). But in Cage’s gruff, muffled speech pattern, there’s an abiding kindness that Rob that holds in reserve until he needs it. Mandy is the culmination of a latter-day career renaissance that began with Brian Taylor’s 2017 movie Mom and Dad, where Cage smashes a pool table with a sledgehammer while singing “Hokey Pokey. he roars in a rousing climatic speech to the Ghostland’s citizens, inciting them to fight the Governor’s pervy tyranny. If Prisoners of the Ghostlands is a reminder of what he can do with actual lines, Willy’s Wonderland is an object lesson in the great toolbelt of acting flourishes he carries with him.

It’s a moment that clangs against the essence of Cage as shown in both Willy’s Wonderland and Prisoners of the Ghostland.