Now, I will say straight up front that I don’t consider myself to be a die hard fan of Five Nights At Freddy’s. I’ve barely played the games and have only watched a handful of playthroughs on YouTube of them. I know some of the very basic stuff but that’s about it. That in of itself might make plenty of you want to click off of this review immediately but I don’t think that should be enough to hamper my enjoyment of the film. You shouldn’t have to be a hardcore fan of a video game to like a video game adaption. For example, I have never played a single League of Legends game but I absolutely ADORE Arcane, the Netflix series which is based off of LoL, and it’s one of my favorite shows in recent memory. So, I’m only looking at this at it’s own thing and not going by how faithful it is to the games.
It’s definitely shouldn’t act as a surprise to see Five Nights At Freddy’s getting it’s own movie. Even if I don’t care much for the series, it’s hard to deny it’s popularity as one of the more iconic gaming franchises for this generation of pre-teens, teens and young adults. And with the games putting an emphasis on survival and horror along with being told through a first or third person perspective, it could make for an interesting spin of other successful horror movie franchises out there. As we approach the 10 year anniversary of the very first game, we now have a movie adaption of Five Nights At Freddy’s. Can this game work as being a love letter to fans of the game along with being it’s own self-contained and enjoyable film? While fans of the games might argue yes, as a non-fan of the games, I unfortunately have to say no.
Plot Synopsis: We follow a mall security guard named Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), a man who is who is struggling to take care of his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio) after their younger brother, Garrett (Lucas Grant) was abducted as a child and both of their parents passed away. After a mishap on his mall duty, Mike is fired from it and must find a new job somewhere else. Mike’s career counselor Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard) offers him a job to be a night guard at an abandoned family diner known as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Mike initially refuses but accepts it once social services threaten to take custody of Abby and pass his younger sister over to his estranged aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson).
Of course, once Mike arrives with his new job, it’s not what he suspects. This lead to multiple dreams where he constantly witness the kidnapping of his brother and suspecting that the restaurant’s animatronic mascots known as Freddy Fazbear, Chica, Foxy, and Bonnie might actually be alive. He meets up with a police officer named Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) who knows a good deal about the restaurant herself and perhaps might even have a connection to it. With multiple other circumstances thrown into the mix such as Jane trying to get her nephew fired from her job by vandalizing the entertainment center along with Abby forming a strange bond with these animatronic mascots, Mike must find the means to handle the job and the five nights at Freddy’s or else it could lead to himself and those he cares for dying.
Five Nights at Freddy’s by design set itself up to be another “critic proof” kind of movie. The kind of ones that mostly apply to these video game movies. The kind of movies where story and characters are irrelevant and what really matters is the easter eggs, fan service, and being able to deliver the “good enough” portion of the gaming material which the movie is based on. While I’m perfect all for that, I don’t think Five Nights at Freddy’s goes far enough with playing with it’s own premise. If anything, I would argue the movie gets too wrapped up in it’s own story, characters, and lore that the survival horror trope elements and the animatronics themselves basically take a back seat and hardly get any time to play out.
If the story and lore was there to set up the set pieces and animatronics themselves, then it could work. The problem is that not enough time or effort is put into any of that. The film is too wrapped up in the characterization and human drama with Mike and his sister that is about as generic and barebone as it gets. While it’s certainly not the worst example of this that I’ve ever seen in a video game adaption, it bogs down the entire thing because it seems to think that it’s audiences are just as invested with events outside of Five Nights at Freddy’s as they are inside of it. While I can’t speak for the fans in general, I’m willing to believe that is not true whatsoever.
That’s honestly a big reason why is that despite having a runtime of just 109 minutes, the film still feels too long. It moves at a snail pace to take it’s time to set up it’s characters and lore that you don’t even get to see the Five Nights at Freddy’s crew until over a half an hour into the movie. And even when the spotlight is focused on, all the animatronics feel interchangeable and hardly get any moments to stand out as their own frightening animatronic. So, even if you are someone that wants to use the argument about the story and characters not mattering because all that matters is the animatronics and scary moments themselves, you will likely not feel as satisfied as you should.
Once the majority of the focus goes into the restaurant itself, the movie certainly gets better but even then, the moments in it themselves are nothing to write home about. There’s obnoxious jump scares that feel like they are only in there just for the sake of having jump scares, the tension is non-existent because most of these sequences play constantly on repeat, and all of the kill scenes are incredibly tame with nothing that will get under your skin in the best ways. I understand this is a PG-13 movie and that the main core audience of Five Night at Freddy’s mostly centers on teens to young adults but even I know that PG-13 and these kind of films are capable of much better than this. Aside from one kill scene where a certain character gets cut in half (which did admittedly caught me off guard), there’s nothing much I got out of it.
In terms of acting, the performances are……odd. While I totally this movie is going for a more creepy vibe to match with the games, much of the acting feels stilted and over-the-top in ways that I don’t believe was intentional. Josh Hutcherson is able to stand out as the best of the lot as the main character of Mike Schmidt. He holds the movie together and helps make it not completely unwatchable. About every other performance feels like they are trying too hard or barely trying at all. Sometimes they can be fun like Elizabeth Lail as Vanessa but other times it’s just obnoxious like Mary Stuart Masterson as Aunt Jane. Also, why is Matthew Lillard only in ten minutes of this movie? Why in the world would you cast an actor as charismatic and entertaining as him but barley have him in the damn movie?
Production wise, the movie is pretty solid overall. Aside from some strange directing choices, Emma Tammi does what she can with capturing the world of Five Nights at Freddy’s proper on camera and making it look exactly how it’s suppose to look in film form. The work with the animatronics is great and looks like they are ripped straight out of the games. And of course, I’m sure there are enough callbacks, references, easter eggs, and service from the games that will make longtime fans of the franchise feel rewarded. Because of that, I’m sure there will at least be some folks that will get something worthwhile out of their experience with this film.
While Five Nights at Freddy’s is far from the worst video game movie ever made, it’s not one I can say I enjoyed that much. Despite not being a big fan of the series, I was all for a movie that puts a big emphasis on the kind of horror survival tropes that the games are well known. It’s just unfortunate that those elements are not implemented very well and feel like a second thought to everything else going on. There’s too much emphasis on the human drama and everything outside of Five Nights at Freddy’s that you never get a true sense of dread to the animatronics or anything going in the movie. It’s just hopes that the property being a feature film itself is enough to justify it’s existence. While there are plenty of fans out there that feel that’s good enough, I can not agree.
Say what you will about The Super Mario Bros. Movie but that film was able to deliver the Mario goods when it matter the most and never got too wrapped up in it’s own story or lore to make an enjoyable film out of it. And even if you didn’t care about any of that stuff, there was still a solid story present about being an underdog and the importance of brotherhood. Five Nights at Freddy’s fails at basically any one of those things mentioned and relies on the little things that the franchise is known for without putting enough effort into the big things of it.
If you are a die hard fan of Five Nights at Freddy’s and just want to see a movie that at least has the bare minimum of goods from the games, you might be satisfied here. To everyone else though, I really can’t recommend it. It’s just a shame that in an era where video game adaptions have been constantly good to great with the likes of Arcane, The Last of Us, Mario, Sonic, and Gran Turismo, we have something like Five Nights at Freddy’s that reminds us all why these kind of adaptions still get a bad rep to this very day. Maybe the next one will be better but I can’t be bother to drink the Kool-Aid here. I’ll stick with Capri Sun.
Also, this movie is available on Peacock for those who still don’t care to go to the theaters.
Also, Happy Halloween!
Adam's Blog 