Movie Review: 'Five Nights at Freddy's'

Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)

Directed by Emma Tammi

Written by Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback, Tyler MacIntyre

Starring Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Mary Stuart Masterson, Matthew Lillard

Release Date October 27th, 2023

Published October 27th, 2023

Writing about a movie like Five Nights at Freddy's is a thankless task. This is not a movie that gives a critic much to talk about. Movies this witless and needless are more of a tax on your time and energy than anything else. Five Nights at Freddy's is what is called, in industry-speak, an I.P play. That means that it is a well known intellectual property that studio marketers are confident that they can cash in on, regardless of whether the movie is any good. I.P plays are the 'content' that director Martin Scorsese was railing against when everyone accused him of hating Marvel movies. Scorsese doesn't care about Marvel movies, he cares about the result of such movies, I.P plays that take up theater space and waste the critical thinking and mental energy of filmgoers.

The makers of Five Nights at Freddy's aren't so much making a work of art as they are designing a commercial product intended to sell tickets and shift merchandise. Instead of having a script and a visual design aesthetic, a movie like Five Nights at Freddy's has a spreadsheet that details the market testing that helps set goals for how many tickets sold, how many plush toys, blankets and video games sold, and somewhere on a back page, the money paid to people who've been hired to manufacture the final product movie, itself a product that is intended to be packaged and sold as a digital download, some time in the very near future.

Five Nights at Freddy's isn't a movie that was written or directed, rather it was crafted by carpenters who hammer the product into something that resembles a movie but is more of an advertisement for selling tickets to what looks like a movie. The real hope is that you will buy a ticket and a t-shirt, a collector cup and a plush. And, of course, the video game which I am sure will shift a few units due to being made relevant again by a marketing campaign. As someone who loves movies and loves writing about movies, a movie like Five Nights at Freddy's is especially dispiriting. There was never any intention to make a good movie here, there was only ever a marketing campaign and merch.

The Hunger Games actor Josh Hutcherson, who has apparently squandered his Hunger Games paychecks, how else does he end up here, stars in Five Nights at Freddy's as Mike, a depressed and deeply unlikable character. Mike is depressed for a reason, he feels that it was his fault that his younger brother, Garrett, was kidnapped when they were kids. Since then, Mike has made it his mission to try and recall the man who took his brother. This obsession has cost Mike jobs because either he's sleeping through work or he's angrily attacking people.

Having been fired from his most recent job as a Mall security guard, Mike is forced to accept the only job made available to him, security guard in a dilapidated restaurant, a former kid friendly pizza place called Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. All Mike has to do is stay awake and watch some monitors, make sure no one breaks in to steal the animatronic robots that were the heart of the chain. Why does a restaurant that has not been open in over a decade need a security guard? Who cares, the movie sure doesn't care. So, why should we care, right? It's just another extraneous detail in a movie that doesn't care about details or anything other than just existing and vaguely resembling a horror movie.

Elizabeth Lail, Matthew Lillard, and Mary Louise Masterson are also in Five Nights at Freddy's but these talented supporting players are all wasted in underwritten and thankless roles. Lail especially has the impossible task of trying to befriend the deeply unlikable Mike and make him seem like a person. It's a solid effort on her part but ultimately futile. What possessed director Emma Tammi to direct Josh Hutcherson to be the least charismatic, least exciting protagonist in any movie in years is truly a mystery. Hutcherson is horrible in Five Nights at Freddy's. His actions in protecting his little sister from the malevolent animatronic monsters who become the big bads of Five Nights at Freddy's make him vaguely heroic, but Hutcherson still plays the character as if his arc was going from being unlikable to even more unlikable.

The animatronic monsters of Five Nights at Freddy's are nearly as unpleasant and forgettable as Hutcherson. There is nothing visually interesting or remotely attractive to the eye about these witless animatronics. We're told that these robotic monsters possess the souls of children who were kidnapped back in the 1980s but this back story doesn't give any new or interesting life to these monsters. Rather, the convoluted back story, that also includes the fate of Mike's brother, sort of, is a complete mess that makes about as much sense as an empty restaurant needing a security guard.

One brief example of the careless storytelling at the heart of Five Nights at Freddy's. Early on in the movie, characters go out of their way not to mention Mike's last name. The movie makes a point of having Mike not mention his last name in conversation. It appears the movie would like us to wonder about his last name, as if it were going to be important later. It's never important. His last name is Schmit and I promise that knowing this will have no effect on your viewing experience of Five Nights at Freddy's. I assume that the last name a reference to the baseball Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt, but why that needs to be kept mysterious is anyone's guess. It's needless, distracting, and informative in terms of how carelessly assembled Five Nights at Freddy's is.

Five Nights at Freddy's is a witless waste of time. I would say it was a waste of effort but other than Elizabeth Lail trying to convince us that her character would want to spend time around Hutcherson's Mike, there isn't much effort on display. Five Nights at Freddy's is merely a commercial for other products. This is a soulless I.P play of the most naked and ugly variety. The studio behind Five Nights at Freddy's have no qualms about trying to hide their greedy capitalist avarice. The producers have no notion of hiding how little they care about this movie. The goal is to sell ancillary products and shift some tickets based on the popularity of the video game I.P and that's it. And that makes me really hate this movie.

At the very least, the studio could have tried to lie to us. The makers of Five Nights of Freddy's could have at least pretended they were trying to make a movie, but no. Instead, they blatantly do not care about making a good movie. Everyone has been paid, the merch store is stocked with plushies, blankets, cups and other such tat, and the movie is merely a feature length commercial for itself, the product that is Five Nights at Freddy's.

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