Imagine waiting nearly a decade for the hypothetical production of a movie that was never actually confirmed and only existed as a fan-generated conspiracy.
Years later, you are informed that it is finally becoming a reality. Your younger self foams at the mouth over the news, and you can’t help the excitement you feel. You have all these theories about how certain key moments will be played out, and you set your expectations high.
Now imagine the release date finally approaching. You head to the theatre on opening night, buy the enormous bucket of popcorn that the theatre offers (an ingenious marketing scam), and sit through all the tedious movie previews to make sure you don’t miss a single moment of the film. The film begins, and you know this movie will be worth all of the hype and the wait… However, you are suddenly met with a shocking truth: the final product is subpar and explicitly defies all the high expectations you previously held.
That’s precisely how I felt after seeing Blumhouse’s Five Nights At Freddy’s.
Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s is a dull, unoriginal, and downright lousy movie. The story is paper-thin, with mix-matched pieces of the game’s lore that make no sense. The film is not lore-accurate whatsoever, and instead, mix-matched elements from the games are thrown in as a blatant, half-hearted attempt to create a movie that will turn a quick profit. The characters are one-dimensional and are not related to the games at all, aside from the animatronics, the eventual appearance of William Afton as Springtrap, and not to mention–the scares that are few and far between. The movie is also incredibly predictable, and there’s nothing about it that will surprise or even entertain you.
If you’re a fan of the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, you’ll be disappointed to know that the movie virtually has nothing to do with the games. The only commonality shared between the fun and the film is the name and the animatronic characters.
The four animatronics, Foxy, Chica, Freddy, and Bonnie, congregate in the middle of the pizzeria’s showroom.
Mike Schmidt, the nightguard, who we initially believe to be Michael Afton, is a random guy named Mike. While he shares the same loss of a younger brother as Michael Afton does in the FNAF world, this parallel ultimately compromises the integrity of the lore created by Scott Cawthon.
Schmidt is an orphaned older brother who is the primary caretaker of his sister, Abby. He is frequently let go from his jobs due to instability, being fired from his mall-cop job for falsely assaulting a man walking with his son, who he wrongfully assumed to be an abductor, and is forced to take up a position at Freddy’s to prevent his aunt from taking legal custody of Abby.
Most of the movie’s plot draws on the extensive backstory of the disappearance of Schmidt’s younger brother, Garrett, and self-blame for his inability to save him. The film is not so much focused on the animatronics themselves or the game’s lore but on Schmidt’s struggles with PTSD and his recurring nightmares. Die-hard fans of the franchise pick up on the relation to Michael Afton’s nightmares in FNAF 4; however, again, it makes no sense in the context of FNAF 1.
Then we meet Vanessa, the creepily obsessed with Freddy Fazbear’s police officer. If you know the lore, you know Vanessa is the nightguard and main antagonist from Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach. In this film, which takes place in the FNAF 1 location, she has no business being there. Additionally, the movie takes place in the early 2000s, which we know is inaccurate because the FNAF events occurred in the 1980s and 90s.
For a film that is intended to be about the souls of children possessing animatronics that kill, this movie has very little to do with possessed-animatronics killing. For example, while there are three instances in which the robots kill, fans are left displeased and bored. At one point, the animatronics built a pillow fort with the nightguard… How dull…
Expectations were set high expressly for including the spring lock scene in the film, an essential staple to the Five Nights At Freddy’s lore; however, it was still utterly disappointing. Rather than a bone-crunching, vocal-cord-piercing bloodbath, William Afton’s death and Springtrap’s rise were extraordinarily rushed and not given the gory justice they deserved. The movie’s spring lock scene cannot compete with the plethora of fan-made animations on YouTube.
As one notable critic scrutinizes, Blumhouse’s, Five Nights At Freddy’s, has been “scrubbed and sanitized to score a PG-13 rating,” which inevitably “sucks every last drop of fun right out of the killer premise” (Louisa Moore).
The flaws within this production are the failed potential it could’ve had. Adopting a PG-13 rating was undoubtedly a means to ensure a large audience and an attempt to pull in revenue. However, the cost was a horrible end product. Five Nights At Freddy’s’ backstory, deserved an R-rated portrayal on the big screens, with all the blood, gore, and sinisterness its lore demands.
Overall, Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s is a waste of time and money and more like a “Chuck E. Cheese” type of ordeal than anything else. If you’re looking for a good horror movie, you’ll want to look elsewhere.
