The long-anticipated Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) movie finally hit theaters recently, after an 8-year-long production cycle.  It follows security guard Mike Schmidt as he begins to work the night shift at the local Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria, an abandoned pizzeria that used animatronics to portray the franchise’s characters in a style very similar to that of Chuck E. Cheese. The animatronics begin to behave strangely and Schmidt’s visions of the man who abducted his brother intensify, and chaos ensues. Being based off of the incredibly successful game franchise of the same name, the movie has been extremely successful and easily has made its mere $20 million budget, making $78 million in the domestic market in its opening weekend and $130 million worldwide. This box office performance has been led by its generally positive reaction from audiences, despite mostly negative reviews from critics. Cedar Post staffers Will Clark and Matthew Norton led the charge, seeing the movie once it was available, leaving them with the following thoughts: 

Will (SPOILER FREE)

The unfortunate truth is that as a child I was, indeed, a Five Nights at Freddy’s kid. After years of anticipation for this film, spending countless hours trying to understand the grand and expansive lore of these games, it finally arrived at our local theater. And, after all that time spent on the franchise, I think that this movie was a bit of a disappointment for me; however, there were many parts I did like. The best part of this movie is how the animatronics look; the practical effects were excellent and I never felt that they looked out of place in the environment around them, which can be a common problem for these kinds of horror movies. Freddy and the gang all appeared as they did in the games, and despite many of my issues with how these characters were portrayed, they always looked great. The humor also generally worked for me; it was not the funniest movie of the year, but I think many of the jokes landed as they were meant to, although I worry that the cameos by YouTube personalities may somewhat date the movie. I also found Josh Hutcherson’s performance as Mike to be very captivating, leading me to be interested with his plotline around his brother, even if that feels somewhat rushed in the end. He did a great job of selling someone who is stuck in the past and tortured over an event that has long passed, not allowing him to meaningfully move on.

On the negative side, I found the tone of the movie to be very inconsistent, sometimes being a creepy horror movie and sometimes being an incredibly tame and silly kids movie, in a way that pulled me out of the experience, with one scene in particular completely ruining any fear I had for any of the animatronics. Due to this inconsistency in tone, I struggle to recommend this movie as a serious horror film, although maybe that’s an unfair complaint against a movie clearly targeted toward the juvenile FNAF fanbase. There’s also the elephant in the room for someone somewhat part of the Five Nights at Freddy’s fanbase, such as myself, which is the way they play around with the established lore. I feel that many things are not explained well enough for anyone unfamiliar with the long plot line of the games to understand, and yet what is left in for fans isn’t delved into very deeply. I am not upset that they chose to change certain parts of the lore—I expected that—but I do feel that they fell in a strange middle ground between adjusting the lore so it’s more accessible and appealing to the hardcore fans, where both sides feel somewhat unfulfilled with how it’s shown. I do not think that this is a bad film, I actually think that for many people who want a horror movie that is also more upbeat and child-friendly this is a great movie, it just didn’t quite hit all the beats that I had hoped for. If placed on a scale out of ten, I would probably place this at a 5 or 6; it’s not bad, but it’s not super great either. 

Matthew (SPOILER REVIEW):

While I am not a hardcore fan of the games, I am familiar with the general storyline of them and believe that the movie’s plot is a worse version of this. The introduction of Mike’s brother Garret as a central aspect of the story wound up feeling disconnected from the rest of the plot and generally came up short. Why do the kids trapped in the animatronics care so much about Garret and Abby (Mike’s younger sister)? Abby being connected to the animatronics only because of Garret makes no sense because we are never shown on screen why the animatronics are connected to Garret. Additionally, Vanessa’s character being changed drastically from the games is not my problem with her inclusion, but that these changes offer nothing of interest to the film is my problem; Vannessa, being the child of William Afton, makes her, as a character, feel flawed and incomplete throughout the film. Her character is changed to make the audience familiar with the game and leaps to certain conclusions about the plot, leading to a twist that doesn’t change anything. The twist of Vannessa being William Afton’s daughter does not add to the story; because, nothing changes due to revelation.

Another one of my problems with the film was with the attitude and characterization of the animatronics. At some points in the movie, the animatronics are humanized for the audience to feel bad for the ghost kids CD. However, this plot point ends up making the animatronics not scary and uninteresting as the audience does not know whether to feel bad for the animatronics or scared of them, as they tried to make them scary again. The movie overall does not make clear whether it’s supposed to be a kids movie or a horror.

The plot point about custody over Abby could have had a satisfying conclusion as well. Abby’s aunt being killed by an animatronic while she is supposed to be watching Abby is not a fulfilling way to resolve the conflict. My final quarrel with the film was the idea of the picture on the wall manipulating the animatronics. The picture on the wall made for an uninteresting ending as to why they were being mind-controlled by William Afton. At the end Abby just took the picture off the wall and put her picture; this made for an uninteresting ending to the story. In the end, my main complaint about the movie was the story was not up to standard for a film that has been in production for eight years, and I frankly expected more. However, there were some positives. For example, the animatronics looked great, and the jokes landed for the intended audience. The filming of the movie appeared as if it was done with care, and it showed. Although the budget was not as much as your average Marvel movie, it looked better. Overall, I wish the movie’s story was more captivating, and if I had to rate this movie on a scale from one to ten, I would rank it a five. It’s a perfectly average movie.