Holding their blankets and snacks, audiences gathered at theaters to watch the new “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie. The film was released on Friday, Oct. 27, just in time for Halloween. Rated PG-13, the movie had high expectations from fans who played the original “FNAF” games, released from 2014 to 2021.
The movie is based on the first version of the games, where the player is a security guard tasked with watching four animatronics: Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Foxy the Fox, Chica the Chicken and Golden Freddy for five nights. The player must survive the animatronics and make sure they do not come to the office and attack them.
The film features Josh Hutcherson, who plays a character named Mike. Mike is hired as a security guard for Freddy’s Fazbear’s Pizzeria. Career counselor Steve Raglan, played by Matthew Lillard, hires Mike to watch the animatronics since the pizzeria was shut down due to rumors of kids going missing. However, Mike soon realizes that working the night shift connects him to nightmares he repeatedly has of his kidnapped brother Garrett, played by Lucas Grant.
In these nightmares, Mike encounters five children who ask him for anything in exchange for information about his brother. The kids are later revealed to be the children who actually went missing, proving the rumors to be true. These kids also possess the souls of the five animatronics who perform in the pizzeria as the main attraction.
William Afton, also played by Matthew Lillard, is the perpetrator of the kidnappings. He stuffed the bodies of the kids into the animatronic suits, therefore causing them to be possessed. The reason he does this is unclear; however, the reason in the original game was to achieve immortality. The animatronics have human-like qualities, allowing them to roam around at night and kill anyone they deem a threat.
One night, Mike is unable to get in contact with a babysitter and is forced to bring his younger sister, Abby, played by Piper Rubio, to the pizzeria. Abby quickly finds the animatronics and interacts with them. However, they do not attack her and engage in many playful activities with her, like building a fort. This was an entertaining part of the storyline, as it symbolized that the animatronic still deemed qualities of the children they were stuffed with. Surprised to see that the animatronics are alive, Mike distrusts them and learns that they want to turn Abby into one of them by placing her in an empty animatronic suit with the ability to kill the person being stuffed inside. With Abby’s help and a police officer who was familiar with the pizzeria named Vanessa, played by Elizabeth Lail, they fight the animatronics.
The film did not stay true to the plot of the video games, with different characters and backstories added to the plot line. While the longing for the original storyline nagged many, references shown throughout the movie, like the 8-bit video game introduction, were a nice homage to the minigames in FNAF 3 and 4. Adding in these references indicated that the producers cared about the franchise’s fans.
No computer-generated imagery was used for the animatronics. Instead, Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Golden Freddy were costumes with actors inside of them, while Foxy was an actual animatronic. This made the movie more realistic and added to the overall experience of the movie.
Many complaints were made about the lack of gore and horror; however, the movie is rated PG-13 and therefore cannot include many explicit scenes. There are still sufficient amounts of gore and horror, for example, in the scene where Abby’s former babysitter is cut in half by Freddy. The haunting music and dark scenes were scary enough and the movie did not need more horror.
The casting was done well, as the actors were fantastic and represented their characters excellently. Hutcherson and Rubio were the perfect sibling duo, interacting with each other in the ways that real siblings would, like in the scene where Abby and Mike fought over Mike’s security badge.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” was a vibrant movie filled with sentiment and emotion. The cinematography and effects appealed to all audiences and the animatronics were identical to the original games. It was not a movie for new audiences, as it was more suitable for longtime fans who wanted to experience true nostalgia. However, it could be recommended to anyone for its wonderful video game adaptation and suspenseful plot.
