_{By: Amanda Guarragi}

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a video game franchise that has grown over the past ten years. The characters of animatronic puppets and a security guard keeping the pizzeria (or other locations) safe have been reworked for nine games. The video games follow the same model but place the animatronic puppets in different environments. The games have gained a large cult following, and the fans have awaited this live-action film for a while. What can be said about the film adaptation is that it does cater to the fans. However, it sadly doesn’t develop a strong enough story for audiences to become fans of the franchise as well. The main challenge for Blumhouse was giving it a rating for families to watch this together while still appeasing fans. This became the main issue with the film because they didn’t know which side to focus on. 

In the film adaptation, co-writers Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback and Emma Tammi wanted to add a supernatural layer to the original lore from the games. We meet a troubled security guard named Mike (Josh Hutcherson), who begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Mike is the sole guardian of his little sister Abby (Piper Rubio) after the loss of their mother. He has been trying to find a steady job and provide for her, but it has been hard for him. Amid a custody battle with his aunt, who thinks it’s safer for Abby to go live with her, he finds a job thanks to Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard). Raglan describes the security job, and Mike takes it. It’s pretty straightforward at the beginning until the dream sequences with Mike. His dreams are meant to tell him about the man who had kidnapped his younger brother all those years ago, but all it does is connect him to other children, the ghost children in the animatronic puppets at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. 

On paper, this sounds interesting, and it had the potential to be a wicked supernatural horror film, but it falls short. The focus on Mike and the actual children took away from the menacing animatronic puppets that do all the killing. Instead of working in the lore from the games, the actual gameplay should have been integrated. It became dream sequences upon dream sequences and only one sequence of the animatronic puppets coming out for the scares. The editing also ruined the tension because once the animatronic puppets were out of the frame and walking through the halls, it would cut to the recurring dream. Understandably, they wanted to make this family-friendly, but the 14A rating did not allow these filmmakers the creative freedom to integrate more kills. 

The games are usually played in complete silence with the static of the radio or noises patching through. Or even the security guard turning on the flashlight to see where the animatronic puppets are. Those small things could have been utilized here to build tension. Instead, there were more conversations and almost little to no interactions with the animatronics. This faltered like many monster movies that put the focus on the humans and don’t show what the monsters are capable of. There were cheap jump scares, and the kills were cut short. Five Nights at Freddy’s suffered from an unbalanced script and a 14A rating to cater to children. It was funny for the wrong reasons, and instead of the animatronic puppets being scary, each scene with them brought laughter. The saving grace was an unhinged Matthew Lillard, who is always a joy to watch on screen.