I have never played the Five Nights at Freddy’s games, but I do have a middle school aged brother and a love for Josh Hutcherson. So that’s how I ended up in an AMC on opening night.
My seat was in the middle of the theater, and I immediately knew my mistake. Middle school boys were yelling at each other about spring traps and golden Freddies around projectile popcorn while their exhausted parents tried to ignore them. One such group of boys in the very back row kept amusing each other by shouting “was that the bite of 87?” every time the camera angle changed. Eventually, what sounded like a grown man somewhere in the front rows yelled to the back “shut the fuck up, some of us are trying to watch the movie,” to which the mediator of the boys diplomatically replied, “no, you shut the fuck up,” then lead the group in a round of humming that one song from the game.
The movie “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is about security guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson”) working at an abandoned, Chucky Cheese-like pizzeria while simultaneously raising his younger sister and trying to find his brother’s kidnapper. But also the pizzeria is haunted. And the unemployment office is trying to kill him. And the babysitter’s in a gang thats trying to get him fired. And theres a deus ex machina cop (Elizabeth Lail) constantly showing up to tell us lore. There’s a lot going on.
As a standalone without any context about the games, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is fine. The puppetry provided by the Jim Henson company to bring Freddy Fazbear and friends to life was impressive, but other than that, there wasn’t a lot there that would have lured me to the theater without the name recognition. The story was fine when it wasn’t being spoon fed to the audience via monologues from the cop, the acting from the main cast was fine, the set design of the pizzeria was fine, the cheap jump scares were fine, it was all fine. There’s not much more to say.
If you are a fan of the franchise or know someone that is, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is worth a watch. It’s sure to give you something to talk about with other fans and could be a fun scary movie to watch at sleepovers. But to the horror fans just looking for a good Blumhouse movie to watch for movie night, it’s okay to skip out on this one.
Fun Rating: 2/5
+1 Crowd work
+1 “The Romantics” needle drop
+1 Cultural Literacy
-1 Target audience is 12 years old
Quality Rating: 2.5/5
+1 Muppets
+1 Made with obvious love
+1 Josh Hutcherson and Matthew Lillard acting
-1 Script thinks I’m stupid
+.5 Target audience is 12 so maybe the script is right
