The 2014 “Five Nights at Freddy’s” video game debut was a shocking success. The smash-hit series all started with a simple point-and-click horror game that entailed fending off killer animatronics in a “Chuck E. Cheese”-style pizza restaurant, created by developer Scott Cawthon.
Over the course of nearly a decade, that simple game has spawned a multi-media franchise consisting of over 10 games, 28 novels, an overwhelming amount of merchandise and, now, a feature film adaptation of the same name.
The story of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” film adaption follows Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) as he takes on a night shift security guard job at the long-abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant. Schmidt takes on this new role in the midst of fighting to retain legal custody of his younger sister, Abby (Piper Rubio). All the while, Schmidt is haunted by the unsolved kidnapping of his younger brother, Garrett, still trying to uncover the culprit years later.
The “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie had been rumored to be in the works since 2015. The project switched directors’ hands and production companies multiple times until finally settling on Emma Tammi and Blumhouse Productions to fill both roles respectively. Game developer Cawthon, despite announcing his “retirement” from the franchise in June 2021, co-wrote the screenplay alongside Tammi and co-produced the film.
After a long slog of poorly done video game to silver screen adaptations, fans of several franchises have been rewarded with many sensational film renderings in the past handful of years. From “Arcane” to “The Last of Us” and this year’s “The Super Mario Bros.” movie, there has been hit-after-hit.
However, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” simply does not hold up to this quality of adaptations. To put it bluntly, the film is a confused mess that never masters the themes it tries to portray.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” juggles multiple themes throughout the entirety of the film and fails to truly capture any of them. The movie kicks off with a previous security guard being killed, off-screen, by a Freddy Fazbear mask lined with rapidly spinning blades that is forced onto his face. Yet, throughout the film are moments of comedy and lightheartedness, such as the aforementioned killer animatronics building a table-and-chair fort with Abby, who repeatedly calls the machines her “friends.” The film is weighed down by these clashing tones of horror and comedy, and it fails to deliver on either of them.
The film is not scary when it is trying to be and it is not funny when it is trying to be.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” is also heavily restricted by its PG-13 rating. This may have been done in an attempt to open the film to a wider demographic, primarily the younger audience that the franchise appeals to. The games themselves do not often portray any gore or violence on-screen; it is done through either dialogue or the 8-bit minigames scattered throughout multiple entries in the franchise. The rest is left up to players’ imaginations.
However, the film practices the standard PG-13 methods of killing every single time. Cutting away just before the final blow, a bloody handprint trailing down a fogged-glass door and a death shown by the shadows on the wall are just a few of the ways that all deaths in the movie are played out. There was more blood present in a pixelated scene during the game “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” than in the live-action portrayal of it at the end of the 2023 film.
The film struggles with its PG-13 rating and, although a major core of the target audience for this movie would have been turned away without it, the freedom of an R-rating would have certainly resulted in a better film. Director Tammi has gone on the record to state she is “really happy” with the film’s rating and “PG-13 tone.”
The “Five Nights at Freddy’s” franchise is known for its vague storytelling, and this adaptation falls right in line with this pattern. This is particularly alienating for viewers that are not well-versed in the FNAF world.
The film itself draws primarily from the first three games of the series. A die-hard fan of the franchise who is far-too-deep in the practically-comical amount of lore will notice the Easter Eggs, call-backs and cameos. A moviegoer who knows nothing about the games will simply find themselves confused by everything they are watching.
A particular reveal — that every FNAF fan saw coming — toward the end of the film left a desire for the movie to utilize this character more. Instead, the character arrives out of nowhere and is gone just as quickly.
All of this culminates in a movie that is, overall, extremely boring and disappointing. The characters and story move at a snail’s pace. “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is roughly an hour and 50 minutes — a miracle in a time where the majority of movies boast 2 and a half to 3 hour runtimes. Yet somehow, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” still found a way to make viewers feel as if it was dragging its animatronic endo-skeleton feet across the finish line.