Five Nights at Freddy's - A Movie Review

Here’s some survival equipment if you’re venturing to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.

Based on the video game of the same name, Five Nights at Freddy’s is a 2023 film. A troubled security guard begins working at the abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. This place has a haunting history. The longer Mike is there each night things get weirder.

I have never played the Five Nights at Freddy’s video game so I mainly saw this movie as an entertaining horror flick on Halloween weekend. The film is somewhat disappointing barely exploring the menacing animatronic figures. The movie meanders with unnecessary character backstories, leaving a sense of missed opportunity.

My friend and I were saying that we must be old if Josh Hutcherson is now old enough to play a parent. It’s been a while since I have seen Hutcherson in a film. Mike is the typical protagonist who is fighting a custody battle for his younger sister, suffers childhood guilt, and gets a job as a security guard.

In my opinion, this film could have easily worked with one character instead of adding numerous subplots. Why writers thought that a subplot about Mike’s past and ghost children were more important than the restaurant’s evil mascot animatronics is beyond me! The main characters hoard all the main focus on them. They’re not even interesting!

Five Nights at Freddy’s includes Piper Robin, Elizabeth Lail, and a short (but memorable) appearance by Matthew Lillard. Lillard is easily the best part of the movie! There are other fun cameos in the film like Youtuber CoryXKenshin as a comical taxi driver. It was the funniest part of the movie.

The main story is weak. The movie takes a different direction from its source material, focusing more on character backstory than the expected jump scares and animatronic horrors. While its emphasis on character development adds a layer of complexity to the narrative, Emma Tammi sacrifices the essence of the video game in her direction.

Editing wasn’t tightly constructed for the film. The sequence of Mike’s past and five ghost children repeats throughout the film. Who were the writers of this film? The dialogue is so cheesy that it feels like teenagers wrote it. That is the audience this film is geared towards.

The best part of Five Nights at Freddy's is its set construction to resemble the dark corridors of the restaurant and the animatronics. Set designers did an excellent job creating Freddy Flazbear’s Pizzeria making it dark and terrifying in its twisted hallways.

The Freddy Flazbear animatronics are the best part and they’re hardly in the movie. Real animatronics are used for the film. Each part of the animatronics - eyes, ears, and arms is controlled by different people. Sometimes they moved on their own, startling the crew. These creations deserve more recognition instead of being background characters.

The acting is weak, the story deserves a rewrite, and there are hardly any jump scares or terror to it. We only get one scene where the animatronics hunt down and kill people. The rest of the time the animatronics just stand around or goof off with Mike’s little sister, Abby.

After seeing the movie I researched more into the video game it’s based on. I also watched a walkthrough of the game. The video game is suspenseful because you never know where the animatronics are hiding.

Again, I am not familiar with the Five Nights at Freddy’s game so others who are more familiar with the source material are likely to have a different opinion. Check out Five Nights at Freddy’s in theaters or streaming on Peacock.