This film may as well have been AI-generated as it doesn't have an ounce of creativity. I don't understand how Mark Damon, the producer responsible for THE NEVER ENDING STORY and the UNIVERSAL SOLDIER franchise got conned into financing this. I also don't understand how such a cheap-looking film was able to afford Nicholas Cage, unless of course his fee is far lower than I imagined, the film spent all its financing on securing Cage, or they all just came to a deal over how awesome the basic concept was. The story of how this movie got made and why it ended up falling so flat would be a far more interesting movie than this actual film.
Let's see what's good. Well there's a some well done killer robot designs from Kenneth J. Hall, there's some decent synthwave style music in the soundtrack, the lighting really captures the atmosphere they were going for (something of a hyper-80's aesthetic), and there's a pretty girl in the cast. That's pretty much it.
If you were to make a movie about a haunted Chuck-E-Cheese, it'd be far more effective to focus on a group of character utterly terrified by what is happening around them. Instead, the film doesn't make the killer animatronic robots threatening at all as the hero doesn't even seem to care about them from the start. He just nonchalantly kills the first robot that attacks him and then just goes about his day like nothing happened. I know this is to give Cage's character a "badass" appearance, along with his character never speaking, but at the same time it denies the audience any character to emotionally connect with. I also don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to never have Cage speak, has his ability to overact to an extreme level not seen since Klaus Kinski gets totally wasted. It probably came down to Cage just not wanting to memorize any lines.
A lazy and frustrating effort all around.
Let's see what's good. Well there's a some well done killer robot designs from Kenneth J. Hall, there's some decent synthwave style music in the soundtrack, the lighting really captures the atmosphere they were going for (something of a hyper-80's aesthetic), and there's a pretty girl in the cast. That's pretty much it.
If you were to make a movie about a haunted Chuck-E-Cheese, it'd be far more effective to focus on a group of character utterly terrified by what is happening around them. Instead, the film doesn't make the killer animatronic robots threatening at all as the hero doesn't even seem to care about them from the start. He just nonchalantly kills the first robot that attacks him and then just goes about his day like nothing happened. I know this is to give Cage's character a "badass" appearance, along with his character never speaking, but at the same time it denies the audience any character to emotionally connect with. I also don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to never have Cage speak, has his ability to overact to an extreme level not seen since Klaus Kinski gets totally wasted. It probably came down to Cage just not wanting to memorize any lines.
A lazy and frustrating effort all around.