Five Nights at Freddy's
Universal PicturesThis piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
There’s no denying how massively popular Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s is and continues to attract millions of new gamers worldwide. With its simple design and effective execution, the original game is not only masterfully paced and atmospheric but also damn terrifying. It’s astounding how clicking at multiple cameras and hearing Mike Schmidt’s breaths permeates enough dread to keep anyone glued to their screens, no matter how scared someone may be while playing.
Of course, a film adaptation was inevitable and languished in development hell for many years, with Gil Kenan and Chris Columbus once attached as directors. The two ultimately left the project and were retooled with Emma Tammi behind the camera. Cawthon, who developed the lore and franchise of Five Nights at Freddy’s, co-wrote the script with Tammi and Seth Cuddeback. While deep-cut references to the game, and overall fandom, are present and could make any fan squeal in total bewilderment when they hear the name “William Afton” or see YouTuber MatPat cameo and drop the word “theory,” they aren’t substitutes for a good story with well-developed characters and fun scares.
Instead of focusing on what made the game so great (living animatronics who haunt the security guard at night), Tammi, Cawthon, and Cuddeback attempt to do a character study on trauma. Perhaps it would be better suited for a Halloween film (as Jamie Lee Curtis once said, “It’s about trauwma”), but not Five Nights at Freddy’s. In any event, audiences will have to sit through painstaking sequences of exposition where Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) dreams about his brother (Lucas Grant) getting abducted by William Afton over and over and over again to figure out exactly what The Missing Children, whom the Freddy Fazbear animatronics are controlled by, want from him and his sister, Abby (Piper Rubio).
Mike recently took a job at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, under the counseling of Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard), and believes he has a stronger connection to his dreams when he SLEEPS at a restaurant with LIVING, BREATHING ANIMATRONICS than at home in his bed. It might’ve been more entertaining if Sharkboy suddenly showed up and went, “Just relax, lay about, or my fist will put you out. Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream, dream,” because most of the movie is focused on Mike attempting to figure out what the “Ghost Kids” want to save Abby instead of him slowly realizing that the animatronics in this chintzy pizzeria are alive and out for blood.
When Cawthon expanded the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, it started overcomplicating itself. The film seems to try and pluck everything from the past decade of Five Nights at Freddy’s lore but never focuses on the singular aspect that made the first game so memorable: it was simple. Of course, there was a deeper story behind it, but the game's core was simple. There were no fluff and drawn-out scenes of exposition. It quickly plunged the gamer inside Freddy Fazbear, who had to figure out how to navigate the environment independently.
Tammi and Cawthon have the recipe for a successful – and simple – horror film. The two do not need to delve too deep into the lore, especially when the first film in a likely planned franchise’s goal is to acclimate audiences to the world’s atmosphere and introduce the characters and main threat in a simple but effective manner. Instead, Five Nights at Freddy’s is too busy with its character study, with Mike frequently citing Dream Theory as a catalyst for his slumber visions. At the same time, Mike’s aunt Jane (Marry Stuart Masterson) is trying to find some dirt on him so his custody of Abby can revert to her.
Yes, in a Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, there’s an utterly perfunctory subplot involving Mike’s aunt trying to put his nephew in jail, which sees her hired goons ransack Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza as an attempt to paint him as a negligent security guard. It makes no shred of sense, but it at least gives the film its only energetic scene, with Tammi and cinematographer Lyn Moncrief crafting a wide array of creative PG-13 kills, utilizing light and shadows to their advantage instead of directly cutting away from the violence, like Blumhouse’s M3GAN, which frequently wanted to be gruesome, but never did. Five Nights at Freddy’s is not a particularly scary movie. At least it tries to set a decent atmosphere, and some of the kills in that sequence mentioned above definitely push the limits of that rating.
After that rather impassioned sequence, the movie grinds to a halt and delves deeper into its dull character study. It also starts to spoon-feed audiences endless references to the world of Five Nights at Freddy’s so the Rick Dalton pointing meme from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood can be executed in unison in the cinema because the fans KNOW WHAT THIS IS! There is, of course, nothing wrong with pleasing the fans and making them go nuts at the sight of a character or an easter egg present on the screen. The Marvel Cinematic Universe frequently does this. However, the fundamental difference between this franchise and Five Nights at Freddy’s is that the easter eggs support the story and characters and rarely feel egregious (the keyword is rarely; John Krasinski’s Reed Richards in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is especially grating).
In Five Nights at Freddy’s, the multiple cameos, easter eggs, and lines dropped by certain characters only serve the purpose of distracting audiences from its undercooked screenplay and milquetoast thrills. When William Afton says, “I always come back,” it means something from anyone who played the game, who is inclined to yell at the screen because it was a direct reference to something they understand. Beyond that, it does little to thrill fans in actively engaging them in the movie. None of the easter eggs seem earned because the film is too focused on artificially building emotional catharsis through these moments instead of developing the characters beyond one-note attributes. Mike is the emotionally tormented security guard, Abby profoundly connects to the animatronics, and the female lead, Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), is the cop with a shadowy, and inherently predictable, past. That’s it. There is nothing else beyond that.
Hutcherson desperately tries to infuse some personality in his character but is forced to work with such a lackadaisical script that any attempt to move Mike past his one-note traits fails. Lail and Rubio also attempt to do the same thing, with the latter succeeding more often than the former, but not by much. Only Matthew Lillard comes out of this movie unscathed because his arc takes such a drastic turn that the final act turns into total madcap unintentional hilarity. Tammi tries to play it seriously, but Lillard’s portrayal is so out there that it strangely works, clearly channeling his inner Shaggy from his time in the Raja Gosnell Scooby-Doo movies. Perhaps a Lillardaissance is long overdue.
The animatronic work from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop is arguably the film's highlight. The Fazbear characters have never looked this vivid and realistic. Seeing the meticulous details up close is enough to creep anybody who played the game out. When Freddy, Chica, Foxy, and Bunny are in the same room together, a sense of dread is immediately felt only through their presence. It is, however, a shame that Tammi doesn’t push their frightening presence further and plays with Cawthon’s jumpscares, which remain the best use of the trope in modern horror video games.
But good-looking animatronics and a few neat scares aren’t enough to save Five Nights at Freddy’s from being yet another dreary IP-driven piece of “content” from Blumhouse, who know how to make commercially viable – but not artistically engaging – horror movies. Fans who only look to point at the screen and replicate the Soyjak pointing meme will probably be satisfied. But anyone not “in” on the FNAF community won’t be impressed with what the film offers.
As someone who extensively played Five Nights at Freddy’s and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, there isn’t a single moment in this movie that feels earned. It is just cheap bait to appease the MatPat and Markiplier heads, who are far too invested in their parasocial relationship with the YouTuber to think about the film for a second. Universal will have two highly successful game-to-film adaptations in 2023. But only one of them was not only respectful of the fans by feeding them with earned easter eggs but crafted a story anyone could relate to and understand in The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Five Nights at Freddy’s is precisely what Martin Scorsese talks about when he refers to commercial films as “theme park rides,” with the scene from SpongeBob Squarepants riding the most inoffensive kiddie coaster imaginable an apt descriptor of what this adaptation offers. Ignore the film and stick to the game