Nicolas Cage is back taking a paycheck for another wacky Nic Cagerific indie horror/action flick and that can be either awesome in its badness or just bad. Sad to say, this not-at-all-inspired-by-five-nights-at-freddys movie is just really mediocre. Mediocre to bad. And it’s also too try-hard. Trying too hard to be an edgy, cool cult movie.

So Cage plays a silent protagonist who has no lines (or backstory or character – just a series of quirks). He is hired to clean up a closed down children’s restaurant… a place with creepy animatronic singin’ and dancin’ animals… think Chuck E. Cheese… or the Five Nights game if we’re being honest. How this didn’t get the license is a mystery. Anyway, the animatronics come to life and he (and some town teenagers) have to fight back.

Main issue here isn’t the lack of character or backstory for Cage… they are going for a real bad ass here type vibe. The real problem isn’t the iffy acting from some of the younger cast members. The real problem isn’t even the cribbing from a cult game. The real problem is that both the horror and action scenes are a choppy, herky-jerky, over-edited mess. There’s no scares in the flick and the action is too spastic to follow or care about. Yeah, it doesn’t help the characters aren’t people so its hard to care about them. And yeah, it doesn’t help the movie is clearly trying too hard to be cool.

So it’s a horror action film with a try hard Nicolas Cage in a series of very bloody fights with a bunch of non-scary animatronic animals. This could have been good doofy fun but it’s ultimately just an editing mess. Even as a later day Nic Cage B movie genre exercise, he’s done better in much more interesting (if equally dumb) movies.

Score: 66