Warning: Minor spoilers from the movie and fan lore!
If you haven’t been living under a rock, the long-awaited Five Nights at Freddy’s movie released on October 27th. Five Nights At Freddy’s is an indie-horror game created by Scott Cawthon in 2014, quickly becoming one of the biggest video game franchises of all time, with help from famous Youtubers such as Markiplier and MatPat, reacting to the game’s iconic jumpscares and dissecting the never-ending lore. To give a little bit of premise, FNAF takes place in a fictional version of a Chuck n Cheese arcade and pizzeria, where you are the night-time security guard watching over the eerie locale. However, there is a big secret, and that’s that the animatronics come back to life and will try to kill you, hence having to survive each night at Freddy’s. The game mechanics are simple, but with each new game, fans are introduced to a new location, animatronics, and most importantly, lore. Ever since the game was created, fans have wished for a movie, and those dreams came true back in 2019 when Warner Bros announced the film but was later scrapped due to budget cuts and movie decisions. Luckily, famous horror movie production studio Blumhouse was asked by Cawthon to create the movie and after many delays, the film is finally here.
On my first watch, which was in a movie theater on release day, and for being my first “scary” movie, it was enjoyable. I liked how they adapted parts of the lore into the film, as well as making the film seem scary but not gory. The characters of Mike and Abby who were played by Hunger Games’ Peeta, Josh Hutcherson, and child actress Piper Rubio, played amazingly with each other. I loved their dynamic as siblings, as it reminded me of my own, but Hutcherson’s portrayal of Mike was incredible. From the great shots in between him sleeping to him dreaming about his brother’s abduction by Afton, who is the child killer in the movie, it was incredible.
The scary parts weren’t so much as scary, more like I expected the jumpscares from the animatronics such as Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, so I wasn’t as scared as I thought I would be. The surprising scaring parts came from minor animatronics such as Chica’s Cupcake and Balloon Boy, whose jumpscares were sporadic but scary as no one was expecting them to make a major scene. You could hear the entire theater yelp during their parts because genuinely, they made you jump out of your seat. When it comes to gore, a lot of fans had high expectations since the game can be gory, though the only gory part we saw game-wise is when Purple Guy, who is Afton, gets trapped in Springtrap and gets murdered by Springtrap’s suit. The movie does showcase this scene, where Matthew Lillard, who plays Afton, puts on the Springtrap and tries to end everyone in the pizzeria, ends up getting Springtrapped by the suit as the animatronics, which has the souls of the children he killed, turn their backs on him, leaving him to die, but all fans know that he’s coming back.
My biggest complaint, even though it was a known fact from the start is that they made the movie more canon towards the books -yes there are books- than to the video games that everyone knows and loves. This just confuses both new and old fans when it comes to the lore because it becomes so tangled and messy that the fan lore becomes unclear. I am still confused even after watching MatPat’s countless theories about it. However, I am glad that they made the movie a bit more ambiguous for new viewers as it means that you don’t need a lot of knowledge of the games themselves to understand and enjoy the movie.
Overall, the movie was a 10/10 movie for me. Twelve-year-old me watched the movie and loved it. Blumhouse even said the movie was created for fans, not critics and they were right, with FNAF being one of the highest-grossing horror films of this year according to Rotten Tomatoes. I also loved that they catered to fan wishes as they included Youtubers MatPat and Cory Kenshin in the film as minor characters, and while everyone was hoping for a Markiplier cameo, it never happened due to scheduling conflicts. As someone who saw The Living Tombstone. a music duo that creates video game and pop culture-themed music, live at Florida Supercon 2022, it was a very nice and endearing touch to add their song properly named “Five Nights at Freddy’s”, in the end credits.