For the last nine years indie horror games (horror games made by small developers) have been immensely popular due to the near instant success of “Five Nights At Freddy’s” in 2014. FNAF (a popular shortening of the title) was and still is a cultural phenomenon, living rent free in just about every kid’s mind. The games follow a night guard who has to work the night shift from 12 to 6 at a “Chuck E. Cheese” type restaurant. The catch is that the animatronics roam around toward your office and it’s your job to stop them from getting in. While simple, the use of excellent sound design and character design created an utterly horrifying experience that would soon spawn many sequels. After gaining instant success a movie started development, and after many years and many new scripts the Five Nights At Freddy’s movie released just this past weekend. So, does it live up to the hype?
The film follows Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) a character from the original game. We see that Mike is highly unstable and can’t keep a job for the life of him. After losing a recent security gig at a mall, Mike meets up with a career counselor by the name Steve Raglan, who is later found out to be William Afton (Matthew Lillard). Steve offers him a job at the old run down Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a once popular restaurant in the 80’s that mysteriously shut down. Although hesitantly at first, Mike takes the job in order to keep custody of his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio). While on his first night Mike falls asleep on the job and dreams about the day his brother was kidnapped, when all of a sudden he notices five random kids all staring at him. Unbeknownst to Mike these kids are the same kids who went missing at Freddy’s all the way back in the 80’s, now haunting the location, and possessing the animatronics. Waking up, Mike notices a knocking at the main door who turns out to be a police officer by the name Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail). Vanessa tells Mike about the location’s past and leaves for the night.
All of these events take place in the first 30 minutes of the film, and we barely see any animatronics. This is one of the film’s many faults, and a sad one at that. The animatronics, which were excellently designed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, have way less screen time then they should, being that they’re the star of the show. Looking past that, every scene displaying the animatronics is very well done and breaks the fake-looking animatronics curse of “Willy’s Wonderland”(2021) and “The Banana Splits Movie”(2019). In the best scene of the movie we watch a group of people break into Freddy’s aiming to wreck the place, when one by one the animatronics kills them. The amazing design of the animatronics and set contribute to the fun slasher-like mood of the scene as we watch each of them get killed by each of the four main animatronics. In the best part of the scene we watch Freddy (the bear animatronic) decapitate Max (Kat Conner Sterling), a scene reminiscent of one in the fourth title “Five Night’s At Freddy’s 4.” That’s not the only reference to the games though.
Video game movies often utilize references to keep the attention of those watching that have played the games. Of course a game like “Five Night’s At Freddy’s” which spans over ten game titles and many books is more than ripe to pick many upon many references. Some of note include the recreation of the original office’s recreation from the first game, Sparky (a famous hoax animatronic that never existed) can be found in the back room, the opening credits of the movie are reminiscent of the 8-bit mini games, and much, much, more. I realize that these references boil down to just making one group of viewers happy, but because I’ve quite literally grown up with this franchise they were very exciting. Among all of the other references, two stand out, those being the inclusion of the YouTubers CoryxKenshin and Mat Pat from “Game Theory.” These inclusions were amazing, and almost a thank you in a way since YouTube was the main reason the original game blew up in the first place. Any fan of the franchise will find lots to love when it comes to references.
To many who have not played or invested in the FNAF franchise, the games seem like dumb, jump-scare filled horror games with no plot whatsoever. In actuality the games have one of the hardest stories in media to interpret, and after all these years there’s still things we don’t know. So, does the movie stick to the original story? The answer is sort of. While some aspects remain like how the animatronics are possessed by the kids that William Afton killed and stuffed in the suits, others are changed. For example, Vanessa is later in the film found out to be William’s daughter. A huge departure from the games where Vanessa is a security guard in FNAF: Security Breach. To some, the departures from the original story can seem heartbreaking, but to most the changes are minor and improve some of the original complexities. That doesn’t however mean that the story is perfect in any way.
The film, like I said earlier, has many animatronic-less scenes. Instead the movie wastes a lot of time with side plots that lead nowhere, most notable is the one about Mike trying to keep custody of Abby. In this sub-plot we see Mike’s Aunt Jan (Mary Stuart Masterson) as she attempts to take custody of Abby by any means necessary. Although well played, Aunt Jan’s character does nothing for the overall plot and the subplot seems like it only exists to pad time. The next problem of significance is Vanessa’s character in general. Every time Vanessa talks to Mike she conceals information from him which ends up hurting Mike. For example, when Vanessa tells Mike to never bring Abby to the restaurant again. Mike listens to this and returns the next night without Abby, thus angering the animatronics and causing them to almost kill Mike and stuff him into a suit. After he almost dies, Mike finds that Vanessa is right outside and that she knew this was going to happen. It makes no sense that Vanessa didn’t even warn Mike.
One last thing that was a weird addition to the plot was the scenes with the friendly animatronics. In the game the animatronics stop at nothing to hunt you down and kill you, but in the movie we see a nicer side of them. The animatronics are possessed by the souls of kids and as such still act like kids, just murderous kids. When they find Abby, the animatronics begin playing with her. In one scene Vanessa, Abby, Mike, and the animatronics Bonnie, Freddy, Chica, and Foxy build a fort out of tables and chairs together. The scene while feeling cheesy is actually quite cute and shows that at the end of the day the Animatronics are still kids.
The film’s performances are overall good, but one sticks out and that’s Matthew Lillard as William Afton. Sadly much like the animatronics, William doesn’t have much screen time. He’s really only in the movie at the very beginning and very end. Even though we don’t see him much, he definitely makes an impression as a goofy and menacing main antagonist. At the end of the film as many would expect William gets Spring locked, meeting a grizzly end. The scene, while well done, shows the limited capabilities of gore in a pg-13 film. Still though, Lillard is able to create a menacingly fun villain in little actual screen time.
As a fan of “Five Nights At Freddy’s” I loved the movie, but it does have many flaws. The story is over bloated and its not very scary, and some characters are unrealistic (I’m looking at you, Vanessa), but what is there at the very least makes for a dumb fun type watch. And for any fans of the series, I fully recommend you watch this movie.