When I first heard that Blumhouse Productions was making a Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) movie, I had doubts. When people I knew watched the movie and came back with negative reviews, I thought my suspicions had been confirmed. However, most people based their complaints on lore–inaccuracy, and I realized that I don’t care how the movie compares to the games. I never played them anyway. So, I took it upon myself to watch the FNAF movie and review it from the perspective of someone completely outside of the fandom.
The FNAF movie is based visually on the video game series and plot-wise on a mix of various games and books, with considerable creative liberties taken. It follows the story of a young man struggling to hold jobs while caring for his younger sister and mourning the loss of his younger brother. After accepting a security gig at the run-down 80’s restaurant Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, he begins to uncover clues that unravel the mystery of his siblings and their connections to the restaurant’s animatronics.
It was admittedly difficult to take the movie seriously at first. I couldn’t stop myself from giggling at the first “scary” animatronic scene because I hadn’t yet been immersed in world-building. However, I quickly got pulled in after a cut from that initial attention-grabbing scene into the “real” start of the movie.
Aside from being enjoyable to look at, Josh Hutcherson played a believable main character (Mike Schmidt) who easily fit into the world that the movie was building. The setting starts out as a plain-looking, undecorated house, except for Mike’s younger sister Abby’s room, which she has plastered with crayon drawings – an effective parallel to the Fazbear restaurant, which we later see as also being covered in similar childish illustrations.
As the movie progressed, I noticed that the camera angles were usually either incredibly up-close or far away, and the movie’s beginning flipped between the two with stark contrast. The first time we get a long-lasting, normal-distance shot is after Mike accepts his security job and enters the Fazbear restaurant. It was incredibly unsettling, and I immediately felt that I was watching Mike through someone else’s eyes, not through the lens of a camera. Of course, we would later find out those eyes belong to the famed Fazbear animatronics.
The majority of the “horror” elements of the movie come from this type of suspense. It was especially easy for this movie to pull off that atmosphere because people automatically think of the animatronics as the “bad guys.” Subverting our expectations every so often by adding scenes where the animatronics are friendly and likable made the suspension level higher and the gore scenes even scarier.
There’s only one section of the movie containing actual slasher-style horror, which I think surprised most viewers. I’m not the biggest fan of gore scenes, but the pacing, timing, and framing made this scene enjoyable to watch. I also appreciated that this segment happened before we got to know the animatronics very well, so once I saw them acting less evil in the later scenes, I felt incredibly unsettled more than anything.
Visually, the animatronics seemed very real – and that’s because they were. They were not CGI but machines that were made and puppeteered for the movie. The realism made me feel even more uneasy when they were on screen because there was no disconnect of “Oh, this isn’t actually real.” I appreciated the dedication to the viewer’s immersion.
So, in terms of being a horror movie, it was effective but not overdone. But FNAF tries to be more than just another horror movie.
The comedy of the movie relied on references and ironic situations rather than being outright said. The plot relies on a balance of the two and a few twists to keep things interesting. Fans of the franchise will predict all of the plot twists, but even I, a non-fan, could guess what was going to happen. Whether that’s a sign they should have hidden the twists better, or if it doesn’t matter because they’re meant to be predictable in the first place, I’ll leave up to the readers.
So, if you’re like me and have never experienced any FNAF content before this movie, I urge you to give it a try anyway. It’s a fun watch that’s not super scary but not too childish either. If you’re a fan of the original games and are going to get caught up on its lore (in)accuracy, you might appreciate some of the smaller details but be bothered by the overall lack of cohesion with the games’ plots. I think most people wouldn’t regret taking the time to watch the movie at least once. But if you’re expecting an incredibly hardcore horror film or an in-depth copy of the games’ lore, you might be more inclined to have the same one-sentence review my father did while leaving the theatre: “That movie sucked.”