I watch a fair number of YouTube movie reviewers and this seems to be an issue with a lot of them. They will watch a movie and then review the movie they wished they’d seen, not the movie they actually sat through. They had expectations that we not what the director intended. Then they complain that the product wasn’t up to what they wished for. That’s not how this works, sorry. So today, I’m going to talk about that, along with look at the latest place I’ve seen this happen, Willy’s Wonderland.Now I don’t think for one second the director of this movie, Kevin Lewis, intended this thing to be high art. It wasn’t. It was a ripoff of 5 Nights at Freddy’s with Nicolas Cage beating the crap out of animatronic Chuck E. Cheese rejects. That’s it. That’s the movie. Take it or leave it. It’s 89 minutes of watching Nic Cage freak out. That’s kind of Nic’s shtick.

Yet so many of the reviews I’ve seen, they’re complaining it’s not high concept. Guys’ it’s about possessed toys. That’s it. That’s the sum total of the concept, high or otherwise. I’ve seen them complain that we don’t get an in-depth background on the Janitor. So what? We don’t even get a name! Cage is a caricature, something that people can mentally insert themselves into the story as, nothing more. It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s wish fulfillment, nothing more. Why did he need to drink a soda every time his watch went off? Who cares? Why did he dance around playing pinball? Who cares? Why were the kids so damn stupid? Who cares? The whole point of watching the movie was to see Nic Cage being Nic Cage, kicking the crap out of puppets.

Yet a lot of people seem to think that if they don’t get the movie they wanted, that it’s somehow the movie’s fault. Nowhere did this film ever pretend to be anything that it wasn’t. The trailer never once promised anything that didn’t get delivered. It’s just dumb fun to make you forget about things for a while. It’s escapist entertainment. It’s not intended to be anything else.

So why do so many so-called reviewers lack the capacity to review the actual movie on screen? I think a lot of them have a picture in their heads of what they think the movie should be, but that’s not what the movie is. There are a fair number of them who went to film school and are putting themselves in the director’s chair. What would they do if they were making this movie? That’s the movie they wind up reviewing, comparing the actual film to what they wish the film had been.

And that’s not how it works. They are looking for meaning where there isn’t any. They are looking for subtext when sometimes, it’s just Nic Cage beating the crap out of stuffed animals. This is the movie you saw. Review what you saw on screen!

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only place I’ve seen this happen. It seems to be a general problem these days with reviewers young and old. I’ve seen people review books and spend most of their time talking about what they wish had been in it, rather than what was actually there. Your bad expectations have nothing to do with the actual product. You have to review the reality, not your fantasy.

You might not personally enjoy it and that’s fine. No product appeals to absolutely everyone, but point out the flaws in what there was, not in what you wish there had been.

This came up a while back when I decided that I wanted to do something a little different in a book and I was looking for a different group of readers  to tell me if I was going in the right direction. Usually, I have a group I deal with, but I wanted an outside opinion. Unfortunately for me, a friend recommended a group he worked with and that turned out to be the wrong people for the job. Because while I was writing science fiction, they were expecting romance. Instead of getting the feedback I wanted, and I told them what I was looking for up front, they kept asking me when the two main characters were going to get together. That was all they cared about. They entirely disregarded the questions I asked and complained that I wasn’t writing the genre they were looking for. It was partially my fault because I didn’t make sure they were a good fit for my material, but it was also theirs for not following basic instructions. Respond to what you’re reading, not what you wish you were reading. If you can’t do that, don’t agree to something that you don’t want to do.

I think that’s the big problem with a lot of reviews today. Willy’s isn’t a straight-up horror movie. It’s not a slasher flick. It’s more of a comedy with horror movie elements. It’s poking fun at horror movies. It’s why there were so many blatant tropes on display. That’s just not what a lot of people want to watch, but because it uses the imagery of horror and the tropes of horror, they want to pretend that’s what it is and then complain when they were wrong.

This really shouldn’t be that difficult, should it? It’s right there! Watch it! Say what you thought! If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t pretend to review it. And that’s all I have to say on that.