So I watched the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie. It felt very nostalgic because when I was eleven, I was a very big participant of the “FNAF-Fan-Club.” Not only was I obsessed with everything the video games had to offer, I was a part of online groups that would decipher the games’ true meaning. This not only ruined me socially, it made me known as a “weird kid” for the majority of middle school, a phase I would like to forget. But after many years of not re-visiting the franchise, I was excited when I found out one of my biggest guilty pleasure games was going to be turned into a movie. So, I thought I would write a review on it as a retired FNAF aficionado.
Five Nights at Freddy’s is a story about a traumatized family business that is constantly going through bankruptcy and experiencing gory violence. I want to add that there are not many things confirmed about the series because the creator, Scott Kaufman, thinks it’s funny to make the entire community go insane. There are many accepted theories, so here is a basic overview of the “lore,” as they call it.
Two men, Willian Afton and Henry Emily, work together to make a pizza restaurant, Freddy’s Pizzeria. They create two mascots to go along with the theme: a yellow bunny costume that William wears, named Bonnie; and a yellow bear that Henry wears, named Freddy. This restaurant gains a lot of attraction and eventually endoskeletons are made for these mascots so that they can work on their own, and these mascots become animatronics. But this new type of technology makes it so that these suits can be worn and move on their own, making them spring lock suits, which, when activated, are extremely sensitive and can kill the wearer if triggered. This technology was made by Henry, who was known for his technological advancements.
With this new technology, Afton’s younger son is accidentally killed by Freddy, who keeps his soul inside the animatronic. This makes bad blood rise between the creating duo because Henry was the one to create the spring lock technology in the first place. William becomes more and more aggressive and eventually he kills the first kid, Susie, who is stuffed into Chica. Then Gabriel in Freddy, Fritz in Foxy, and Jermey in Bonnie. The next child wasn’t murdered, but neglected; it was Henry’s daughter, Charlotte. In Henry’s grief, Charlotte is put into a security puppet, called the marionette, responsible for making sure other children don’t suffer the same fate. The next and last child was Cassidy, but Cassidy was not accepting of this fate. She was stuffed into Freddy’s original suit, known as Golden Freddy now sharing an animatronic with the crying child. She swore to never let Afton rest again. Afton eventually is killed by his own suit, the golden Bonnie, because he triggered the springtraps in the suit and although he doesn’t die, Cassidy tortures him until he eventually comes back.
The movie itself was not bad–it was funny and had standard jumpscares–but for a movie that was in production for eight years, honestly, I expected more, yes even if Josh Hutcherson was everything and more. The main four animatronics were not the scary monsters I remembered. They seemed like a spoof version of FNAF, and most of the time while watching the movie I felt like I was watching a parody of the franchise made by a fan.
But maybe I was being too critical; after all, I am no movie expert. But the FNAF-Fan-Club” inside of me wanted more from the super successful franchise that it is. I wanted to know if it was just me who thought that the movie was subpar, so I conducted my own little research with a few students that have watched the movie, and this is what I found.
The students of Fort Worth Country Day had mixed reviews on how they liked the movie. Three quarters of the participants were familiar with the franchise; however, the rest had not heard of it before.
Half said that knowing the franchise did not impact their viewing experience, while one quarter of the participants said that they enjoyed the movie more because of it. The rest said that the movie was inaccurate because it took its own spin on the lore which was not accepted by the FNAF community, and that impacted them negatively.
FNAF is known for having a very simple yet convoluted story; fans of the franchise call it the “lore.” Behind a very simple horror game lies a devastating story that contains sensitive topics such as murder, fratricide, domestic abuse, and more. The game itself is suitable for younger audiences, but the “lore” is a different story completely.
Knowing that, when the participants were asked if they knew the “lore” of the game, only one quarter said yes, and the rest did not know of such a background story before watching the movie. Even so, after watching the movie, half of the participants gave the games a try or re-visited the games. The other half did not care much to visit the franchise.
Interestingly, all the students would watch the second movie once it came out, most were excited to see where the story would go, and even raved to me about their favorite parts of the movie, laughing about the funny scenes and reminiscing about the scary ones.
Overall, the students of Fort Worth Country Day enjoyed the movie, three quarters of participants liked the movie, and one quarter remained neutral. This was interesting to me because most of what I have seen online was complaints about the movie, its inaccuracy to the accepted lore and overall dislike of the portrayal of the video game itself.
Personally, I wanted a scarier movie. A movie that not only focuses solely on the superficial point of the games themselves, but sheds light into the deeper story trying to be told and maybe even confirm some theories that have been floating around on the internet for years. The movie was fun and enjoyable (although a little immature), but sometimes that is just the charm of the movie itself. I would watch the second movie, which has been confirmed but not at any specific date. Also, I’m excited to see where the movie area of the franchise will go from here, and what their own take of the lore will be.
If you want to judge for yourself you can watch the movie in your local AMC theater, or stream the movie on Peacock. If you’re feeling like Foxy the pirate, there are plenty of Tik Tok accounts that separate the movie into 85 different parts; however, you have to be okay with watching somebody play Subway Surfers at the same time.
