The Five Nights at Freddy’s video game franchise was an unexpected success. The 2014 indie horror game revolving around haunted animatronics at a family entertainment center became a phenomenon. It has spawned numerous sequels, music, books, and now a film adaptation. The film is similar to the first game where an emotionally damaged security guard (Josh Hutcherson) takes a job at an abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria and realizes not all is what it seems with the animatronics. Did the film live up to the expectations of its rabid fanbase?
It was a smart decision to have the developer of the game and the franchise’s creative head Scott Cawthon as writer and producer for the film, because the movie is tied incredibly well with the greater lore of the games. Horror game adaptations have usually gotten the short end of the stick on loyalty to the lore (looking at you, Netflix’s Resident Evil) so it was great to see love given to the story. It definitely is a movie made with the FNAF fandom in mind. There were a lot of great homages to the fandom as well, such as including The Living Tombstone’s Five Nights at Freddy’s song. However, it might be harder for the casual viewer to understand the importance of certain scenes and references.
As far as characters go. Josh Hutcherson does a great job playing a character dealing with intense trauma. His character, Mike Schmidt, takes the job at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria to support himself and his younger sister, all the while dealing with guilt from his brother’s abduction and murder as a child. The film’s villain, William Afton (Matthew Lillarf), isn’t in the movie for a considerable amount of time but mainly sticks to the shadows until the end. He also embodies a lot of Afton’s disturbing characteristics before its even revealed he’s the man behind the slaughter.
It was a genius move on behalf of the filmmakers to make the animatronics actual puppets built by The Jim Henson Company. It made it ten times creepier knowing the giant lumbering animatronics aren’t CGI but instead a real machine. They keep a lot of the qualities from the games, for example, Foxy is quite fast and hums that creepy tune of his as he gets closer. Fans will love seeing callbacks to the jumpscare attacks that made the animatronics iconic and call backs to moments in the games like “the bite of ‘87”.
Overall, the movie is a fun experience for fans of the franchise who have been clamoring for it for almost a decade. It has scares mixed with intricate storytelling. It’s reliance on fan service however may make the experience not as fun for people who have no familiarity with the franchise. But it is not a horrible movie by any means. It’s expected the film will have sequels amid a massively successful box office opening and streaming open on Peacock so we are certainly not done with these animatronics just yet.
3.5/5 Freddys approved
