American video game developer and writer, Scott Cawthon, released “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (FNAF) on Aug. 8, 2014 on all platforms. Since the video games debut, fans were hooked. The 2023 film, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” directed by Emma Tammi and Seth Cuddebac hit theaters on Oct. 27, 2023.
This international horror sensation was not only a unique game, but it came with some pretty complex baggage. The franchise is based around a now closed restaurant with animatronics as its main source of entertainment. After some mysterious disappearances of children, the restaurant is closed. But what exactly happened to those children? How is the restaurant connected? The fans formulated thousands of alternate theories on the back story of this haunted franchise. Cawthon released 13 games in this series along with multiple novels to follow. It wasn’t until nine years later that fans got an official movie based on the franchise.
Despite the complexity of the theorizations that fans have assembled over the years, the movie only spans about 110 minutes long. The FNAF fandom had extremely high expectations for the film and a variety of expectations of how the series’ background would be incorporated due to the heterogeneity of the lore.
In the film, Mike (played by Hutcherson) is in a tough economic situation and cannot keep a job. In order to provide for his sister, he turns to a job as a night time security guard at the now abandoned infamous Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Mike’s job is to keep people out, and as he comes to find, keep the animatronics in place. This is directly connected to the video games series in which people play as the security guard having to survive each night at the pizzeria.
In order to fully enjoy the movie, you must have a decent amount of knowledge on the games and the background. The directors added small details in a bunch of different scenes that are small and hard to catch, but still clear giveaways to the ending of the film and provides for a deeper grasp into the franchise’s fantasy.
The film is rated PG-13, but has quite a few gory scenes that I personally think should be intended for an older audience. The overall production of the movie itself was high quality. The all-star cast, which includes Emmy winner Josh Hutcherson and Matthew Lillard, as well as wearable animatronic suits designed by the Jim Henson company, star in the two hour movie. On the other hand, I thought the movie was far too predictable and not nearly complex enough.
That being said, the general cinematography of the film, in my opinion, was outstanding. The film was able to recreate the dark and creepy feeling the games brought to us all those years ago. Most scenes had poor lighting which gave it a dull and uncanny sense.
The biggest component of the film was the animatronics. Animatronics are lifelike robots similar to puppets. The main idea of the horror games was that the five three animatronics, Freddy, Bonnie and Chica, were somehow alive. In order to maintain the authenticity of the franchise, no CGI was used to show these characters. Instead, all animatronics had costumes made of them for the actors.
As a long-term fan of the FNAF franchise, I was well versed in the FNAF history, from the book series to the games. Having this knowledge definitely made this movie more interesting for me, and it brought back all of the same feelings I had experienced when I was reading the books for the first time but I wasn’t exactly wowed.
Although “Five Nights at Freddy’s” was a satisfactory film, fans had high expectations, and in my opinion, they were not met. The film was shallow and ultimately, basic. It was predictable and truly not worth the wait. While there were a few jumpscares, their numbers didn’t even compare to the amount of heart-quickening scares the video games provided. I believe that with the amount of lore surrounding the franchise, Cawthon and Tammi could have created a masterpiece, but instead we got a decent film.
