On October 27, 2023, I went to see Five Nights at Freddy’s in theaters. I have quite a few thoughts on it.
Five Nights at Freddy’s is a horror movie based on a popular video game series. It was directed by Emma Tammi and produced by Blumhouse Studios. The movie shows main character Mike Schmidt, played by Josh Hutcherson, struggle to keep custody of his little sister, Abby, played by Piper Rubio, and is eventually forced to take the night shift looking after an abandoned pizza restaurant. The animatronics in that restaurant are aware of Mike’s presence, and now he has to figure out how to survive… Five Nights at Freddy’s.
The good in the movie is that it sticks to FNaF’s existing lore and the first game very well. Even though the first FNaF game had virtually no story outside of learning about the shutdown of the restaurant, the movie provides context for it. It even catches up to the time period (the early 90’s). And even though the series is famous for its lore, the movie doesn’t rely too heavily on it, choosing to add elements Scott Cawthon (creator of the games) didn’t. Those elements don’t feel out of place, either, meaning you can decide whether or not the movie is canon to the existing lore or not.
The bad is that it’s not that much of a horror movie if you do know the lore. There are occasional tense scenes, and only one actual jumpscare, but aside from that, the movie is just a sad movie. This isn’t a bad thing, but it makes the movie feel more like a sad, tear-jerking movie rather than a horror movie. The only real thing supporting the horror classification is that it was based on a horror game. It does work as a horror movie, but only if you have no prior knowledge of FNaF lore and want to get jumpscared by what scared people almost ten years ago.
The franchise’s first game released on August 8, 2014, meaning it’s about to celebrate its 10th birthday this coming August. Of course, the first few games in the franchise were simply about keeping abandoned locations free of weirdos who roam the place at night. Then FNaF World was released, and it was in an RPG format, in addition to being the first game in the series to have voice acting (outside of Scott Cawthon voicing the phone guy in the first 4 games). Scott Cawthon created the franchise after a mobile game he developed flopped because the anthropomorphic animal protagonist looked “too creepy.”
As a result of that criticism, he’s created one of the biggest horror franchises in gaming, and a movie has been made about it, with Emma Tammi stating that Blumhouse Studios already has a sequel planned, and she will be directing that one too. Let’s hope this one doesn’t take eight years to release too.
