People of all ages flocked to their local theaters this Halloween weekend in hopes of reliving their childhood. I saw full-grown adults, as well as smaller children that probably shouldn’t see a horror movie at that age. Then again, I’m not their parents.
Though, this movie isn’t as much a horror movie as it was advertised – I saw it as a comedy with a small amount of gore and a dark undertone.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” is a video-game horror series made by indie developer Scott Cawthon, which was released on Aug. 8, 2014, onto the gaming platform, Steam. “Five Nights at Freddy’s” was Cawthon’s last attempt at making games, with his past projects being complete failures. Not this one though. Only four days after the release of FNAF, famous YouTuber Markiplier posted a video of him playing the game, which instantly gathered the attention of his fans. Currently, Markiplier’s video has accumulated over 115 million views on YouTube, and it’s only growing every day.
After the posting of the first video by Markiplier, it created a domino effect of everybody jumping onto the new gaming trend, gaining more and more popularity for Cawthon’s supposedly last game project. However, this wouldn’t be the case. Cawthon went on to release a sequel to the first game, then another, and another, ending up with a total of 11 games within the span of 9 years. Additionally, there are a total of 28 books that go along with the series, although Cawthon states that they aren’t in the same universe as the games.
The development of FNAF being adapted into a movie has been an on-going hush-hush thing ever since Warner Bros acquired the rights to the series in 2015. Since then, the script had been written and then scrapped again and again because it didn’t quite meet Cawthon’s standards. It wasn’t until early spring this year that an official release date was announced for – originally – Oct. 27, 2023. Also, in late December of 2022, it was announced that Josh Hutcherson, better known for his role in “The Hunger Games” trilogy as Peeta Mellark would be playing a main character.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” follows the game premise of animatronics possessed by the spirits of the dead missing children that come alive at night and roam the restaurant causing mischief (maybe murder). In the movie, all the animatronics, except Foxy who was an actual robot, were played by human actors in amazingly designed costumes.
The set design was incredible. I felt like it accurately portrayed how the restaurant would look like in real life. Another thing I enjoyed was the cinematography in the film. I remember one of the first things I said I liked about the movie was how it was filmed – as it wasn’t too dramatic or simplistic.
The film follows Mike Schmidt, brought to life by Josh Hutcherson, the main character and night security guard. Mike accepts a poorly paid job, with worse hours as a night security guard to watch over an abandoned family restaurant, Fredbear’s Family Diner, after it suddenly shut down in the 1980s after multiple disappearances of kids. The only reason Mike accepts a job as terrible as this is because he needs the money in order to keep custody over his younger sister, Abby.
Once Mike gets to his freaky job, of course freaky things start happening. Like having a nightmare and getting hurt in the dream, while also having that same injury in the real world. Then Mike meets Vanessa, a local cop, who befriends him and starts to give him advice on the abandoned restaurant. Here is when he finally meets the gang: Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, introducing them with the banger of a song, “Talking in Your Sleep” by The Romantics. Vanessa starts to explain the history of the place, the story of how a couple of kids went missing in the restaurant and were never found. This marks the end of the first night, but only the beginning of some crazy shenanigans.
A group of degenerates break into the restaurant to make a mess and destroy it after being paid to do so by Mike and Abby’s aunt, so Mike loses his job. This obviously doesn’t go so well with child-possessed animatronics the size of NBA players, and these animatronics are pretty mischievous – and blood-thirsty.
After this is when the story begins to shift and become a bit more lore heavy – but definitely not following the lore of the games, which upsets a lot of people. If I have to complain about the movie, it would be how different the story is layed out when compared to the 11 games and 28 books, a lot of things just don’t make sense. Also, the movie is a bit too fast for such a slow moving, thick storyline since it is just under two hours. Probably could have made the movie a bit longer, but they can’t change it now.
Otherwise, the movie was pretty good. I really love the actors, the sets, and the cinematography. It felt like a good adaptation to the games. The best they could do when making an entire game series into one movie where the main premise is that ghosts possess giant robots and come to life at night and want to shove people into empty suits. Overall, I would give this movie a 4/5 Spartan Heads.
