*this review contains spoilers for “Five Nights at Freddy’s*
As a retired geek, I was elated to hear Blumhouse was coming out with a “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie. The production is based on a cult classic video game series that began in 2014. After being played by popular streamers and YouTubers, the game became an instant classic.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s,” released Oct. 27, is a horror movie based on the 2014 game of the same name. The movie follows Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) as he works as a security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. While he works there, strange things begin to happen with the pizzeria’s animatronics.
In the video game, you play Mike Schmidt, a nighttime security guard manning the security room of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. The pizzeria is a a run-down family pizza joint overrun by homicidal animatronics. The objective of the game is to survive from midnight to 6:00 a.m..
The game has been so successful it resulted in 17 games, five comic books and one movie. As many successful series do, “FNAF” has a lot of lore behind it. YouTubers devote their channels to dissecting the “FNAF” content and coming up with or analyzing new theories.
With such good building blocks, you would think the writers and producers would take this as an opportunity to go along with the canon of the games and follow the timeline…wrong. This is where the “glorious disaster” comes into play. Since the movie was so iconic and heavily anticipated, to a fan of the series, the bulk of the film toggled between falling flat and disappointing.
The depth of this lore is what makes this movie somewhat disappointing. From the point of view of someone familiar with “FNAF” lore, the amount of missed opportunities is saddening. With lore as rich as “FNAF,” the producers and writers had a golden opportunity to make a full, cohesive visualization of the “FNAF” universe with this movie and blew it.
The first missed opportunity by the movie was the characters. From making up new characters to leaving integral ones out, all the way to reviving the dead. Many fans were left wanting more. The only animatronics we see in action are Freddy, Foxy, Bonnie and Chica. While this lineup is surely star-studded, four is a short cast for a universe with over 130 animatronic characters.
On the other hand, the casting of the non-animatronic characters couldn’t have been better. Josh Hutcherson did a phenomenal job in this role and did not disappoint. He acted alongside Matthew Lillard (William Afton) and Elizabeth Lail (Vanessa Monroe). Lail’s role was at the root of my confusion and upset. In the lore, Afton’s daughter is named Elizabeth Afton and was killed at a young age by the animatronic “circus baby” who served as a conduit for her possession. Her name being changed and coming back to life made me and a lot of fans angry, as now the timeline has been extremely distorted and the entire backstory of Circus Baby has now been erased.
The second point of contention is the lack of horror in the film.
All of the games were categorized as horror games, and they lived up to the name. The “FNAF” games are well known for their scares. I was expecting the film to carry on the legacy of jump scares and creepy scenes but was disappointed to see minimal scares, which makes sense given the movie is rated PG-13.
What the film lacks in scare factor, it makes up for in the storyline. The writers did a phenomenal job connecting the dots and making world-building decisions that left even the most diehard of fans shocked.
In the “FNAF” universe, the animatronics are possessed by children’s souls. Most of the children were killed by William Afton. The animatronics are controlled by Afton and manipulated to kill more children. In the movie, we see the animatronics act more childlike, making you gain sympathy for the trapped souls. Telling the audience this information early on enriches the experience and makes the actions of the animatronics more understandable and the actions of Afton more heinous.
All in all, when it comes to the success of the movie, it depends on who you ask. As with many adapted films, it didn’t fit the narrative exactly, but that doesn’t discredit its value. I, like many fans, am excited to see where they take the series and if they take it anywhere, but I doubt it will live up to the preexisting media. Given they have already altered the canon, I’m having a hard time believing it won’t end poorly.