Five Nights At Freddy’s review – No need to call security

Five Nights at Freddy’s, the long-awaited adaptation of game developer Scott Cawthon’s survival horror franchise, enjoys the unique benefit of having a very fleshed-out world to explore, despite having a very barebones game premise to draw on. The first Freddy’s title required you to just stare at a bunch of static monitors and occasionally push some buttons. Nevertheless, with indie horror director Emma Tammi behind the camera, it’s the first game that’s made it to the big screen. And, like the franchise itself, it focuses on its lore above all else. Even if it’s at the cost of being a cohesive piece of entertainment.

Five Nights at Freddy’s, the film, is set in the early 2000s and follows down-on-his-luck Mike Schmidt (played by The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson), a young man troubled by his family history and struggling to take care of his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio). Desperate for employment and on the advice of career counsellor Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard), Mike takes a job as a security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria, a derelict family diner featuring four animatronic mascots – Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy. The restaurant and entertainment centre was abandoned in the 80s for reasons unclear.

Settling into his new job, and making friends with local cop Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), Mike begins to notice strange goings-on at the pizzeria. These incidents collide with his attempts to recapture memories of a childhood trauma. With each night, it becomes clear the diner harbours dark secrets, and the animatronics may be more than they appear (did one of them just blink?).

The issue is that while Five Nights at Freddy’s has the right to call itself a horror film, it fails dismally to be scary. This movie only has to rely on jump scares to be faithful to the source material, and even then, they’re few and far between. One can conclude the decision to avoid excessive gore and violence was intentional to guarantee a PG-13 rating and admit younger audiences – but come on. Those familiar with the material know how potentially bloody and horrific this could have been.

It’s also not helped by the fact that the movie reveals its machinations way too early. With the entire plot centred on uncovering the mysteries of the pizzeria, there are too many telegraphed details scattered throughout. So much so that any final reveal is met with a shrug of expectation from both general audiences and people in the know (i.e. gamers). Five Nights at Freddy’s was never subtle, but you need to at least try to be if you want to build suspense.

The movie also suffers from tonal issues. Emma Tammi and creator Cawthon – the latter who has a story and screenplay credit – appear to be trying to combine FNAF lore with a Stephen King novel. There’s a lot of focus on both the psychological and supernatural that would pair well with a story of killer robots, but it’s not executed expertly enough to produce satisfying results. The success of the FNAF franchise as a whole can mostly be attributed to Cawthon’s ability to lean into question marks and make hay while the fan theories shine. That’s not the case with the movie adaptation, though.

What’s ironic is that, for all its inability to be scary, the movie sidesteps some of the genre’s more frustrating tropes. With the exception of one scene, none of the characters make dumb decisions to keep the story going. The film also strikes a good balance between having sympathetic characters and those we’re waiting to watch get munched by wandering animatronics.

In that regard, Josh Hutcherson is one of the film’s highlights. He portrays genuine lived hardship and wants to do right by his sister. On top of that, he seeks to unearth a buried truth even at the price of his physical wellbeing. The rest of the film’s performances are well placed, including the delicious Matthew Lillard, of Scream fame, who settles back into his horror roots with ease.

Five Nights at Freddy’s is also a great looking movie. Emma Tammi delivers excellent camerawork and the editing lends itself fully to the atmosphere. Dusty pizza boxes and flashing arcade machines occupy the space of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria, and help to accentuate the juxtaposition of a fun and happy place with the really messed up stuff that happened, and continues to happen, under its roof. The score is provided by the Newton Brothers (who frequently collaborate with horror director Mike Flanagan), and the composers keep the musical cues to a minimum, with the occasional 16-bit accent, which does a lot to help entrench and guide the mood.

And now for the primary reason many of us pre-ordered tickets to see Five Nights at Freddy’s: the animatronics and puppetry work are excellent. Credit goes to Jim Henson’s Creature Shop for bringing Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy out of static security cam feeds and into the real world. The animatronics have real weight to them and, if there is any subtlety in this film, it’s in the way they’re able to move and emote. While their scare factor is sadly diminished as the movie continues, they are a joy to behold on screen.

For a movie that was stuck in development hell for as long as it was, Five Nights at Freddy’s suffers from stage fright. It’s unable to be the gut-wrenching horror experience it wants to be and doesn’t properly leverage its premise for a fulfilling payoff. That said, it doesn’t deserve hatred. Even though it’s like cashing in all your arcade tokens and only having enough for a palm-size plushie, at least you had fun playing the games.

Five Nights at Freddy’s is in cinemas now, having released on 27 October.