Review: Five Nights at Freddy’s
Between The Last of Us, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and even Twisted Metal, it’s been a banner year for video game adaptations but Five Nights at Freddy’s doesn’t quite hit the mark of any of those other adaptations.
Based on the game series from Shawn Cawthon, who co-wrote the screenplay for the movie, Josh Hutcherson stars as Mike, who is desperate for work and takes a job being the security guard at the abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. While the first night on duty seems fairly normal, things quickly get stranger and more dangerous as Mike learns the true nature of Freddy’s and its animatronic characters. One of the main issues with Five Nights at Freddy’s is the tone. The movie is way too self-serious and dire and it saps most of the fun that could be had from the performances and story. It also gets really bogged down in Mike’s personal drama and his quest to find out what happened to his brother, who was kidnapped as a child, and there’s very little room left for what, I would expect, most people going to a Five Nights at Freddy’s movie would be going for, which is killer animatronic characters. There’s one pretty great sequence where Freddy and the gang take down some people who break into Freddy’s and start causing a ruckus but for the most part, they are weirdly toothless, even participating in a bizarre 80s style montage about building a fort for Mike’s sister Abby (Piper Rubio). It’s bizarre to look at this movie and Willy’s Wonderland from a few years ago because their issues are almost a mirror of each other. Willy’s Wonderland suffered from a lack of any plot and a repetitive structure, along with the baffling decision to have a completely silent Nicolas Cage, but did have some solid animatronic killing action while Five Nights at Freddys has too much plot and not enough of the animatronic characters on a rampage.
The performances across the board, mostly due to the grim and serious tone of the movie, are really muted and uninteresting. Josh Hutcherson seems checked out and depressed, which fits his character but doesn’t make for an interesting or fun main character. Elizabeth Lail as mysterious police officer Vanessa is basically just an exposition machine giving Mike information on Freddy’s and weird goings-on that are occurring The only human characters giving any sort of performance with some life to it are Mary Stuart Masterson as Mike and Abby’s nasty Aunt Jane, who wants to take custody of Abby from Mike, and Mathew Lillard as Steve Raglan, who works at the employment agency that gives Mike the Freddy’s job, but both of them are only in the movie for a few scenes. The most interesting characters are definitely Freddy and the gang, who are brought to life via some incredible Jim Henson Workshop suits and puppetry. They look right out of the games and are fantastic, which makes it even more frustrating that they don’t get to do a lot more of what you would want them to do, which is stalk and kill people.
Five Nights at Freddy’s isn’t terrible but it’s hard to imagine that the unbalanced mix of drama and backstory to animatronic mayhem is going to satisfy anyone, although maybe this is exactly what fans of the games want, having only played a little of the first game, I really can’t say. I definitely would have preferred a bit more over-the-top energy and more animatronic mayhem but the fact that it’s on Peacock as well as in theaters means I basically watched it for free. Somewhere between Willy’s Wonderland and this is a great, over-the-top movie about killer animatronics in an abandoned pizza place and, maybe if there’s a sequel to this, that will come to fruition.