Warning: Spoilers ahead
After being in the works since 2015 but being consistently delayed due to a series of production and writing problems, the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie was released Friday. The movie, which is an adaption of the beloved “Five Nights at Freddy’s” horror video game series, has had eight years to get fans’ expectations up and many went into the film with high hopes. Did the film manage to deliver on those high hopes?
The film stars Josh Hutcherson—best known for his role as Peeta Mellark in “The Hunger Games” franchise—as Mike, a poor security guard who is forced to take a job at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria after being fired from his last job. As he starts his job, he discovers that the animatronics are possessed by the ghosts of dead children who were murdered there several years before. However, this is where many of the similarities between the game series and the movie end.
While Mike shares the same name as the protagonist in many of the games, his character is different from the Mike Schmidt players are accustomed to. He has a little sister named Abby, who he is struggling to take care of and maintain custody of. Mike is also haunted by memories of his younger brother, Garrett, who was kidnapped on a camping trip as a child. Mike relives the memories of his brother being taken every night in his sleep in an effort to see the kidnapper’s face.
The visuals are one of the strongest points of the film, with all of the shots inside the pizzeria feeling larger than life. The bright colors of the children’s playroom and restaurant stand out when juxtaposed with the dark, dingy security room and storage areas. The lush forest featured in Mike’s dreams is also a strong point of the movie as well as the ghost children who begin to terrorize him in them. The animatronics range between cute and creepy from scene to scene.
The film, however, is far from perfect. For lore sticklers, this movie could feel like a slap in the face. The film routinely undoes the canon of the original game series, and while some vital details remain the same, everything else is on the chopping block. There is a character death that is never explained and seemingly forgotten about, and much of the dialogue between Mike and another character, Vanessa, feels unnatural. But the pros of the film far outweigh the cons.
The deaths are gruesome. Matthew Lillard does an incredible job of depicting a William Afton/Springtrap that is incredibly unnerving and properly evil. One of the most controversial scenes in the film seems to have split the fanbase down the middle, in which the animatronics build a fort with Mike, Vanessa and Abby. However, this scene still did a wonderful job of displaying the fact that the souls stuck in the animatronic suits are children, a fact that the games could have emphasized more.
Ultimately, the film feels like a love letter to the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” fan community, from the YouTubers who skyrocketed the game into the popularity that it now enjoys to the theorists who spent hours poring over the lore of the games and, ultimately, the players themselves. The film does not need to be perfect to accomplish this goal. It just needs to be honest with the audience about what it is, and it definitely delivers. For everyone who was a preteen “Five Nights at Freddy’s” fan who grew up watching MatPat’s Game Theory videos or YouTubers like Markiplier scream in terror, this film feels like a warm hug.
