Greeted by the faint buzzing noise of a clunky fan and the crackly voice of The Phone Guy, the hit game Five Nights at Freddy’s starts in a rundown pizza restaurant. With the spirits of the dead children inside the facility animatronics (Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken, Foxy the Pirate Fox), the goal of the game is to survive until six in the morning while preserving the battery life of your outdated equipment. Since its fateful inception of the series on Aug. 8, 2014, creator Scott Cawthon has made nine more games and three novels to build up the lore and fanbase of the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise.
Now, after years of anticipation and countless fan-made films and adaptations, Jason Blum films, Scott Cawthon, Emma Tammi (director), and Jim Henson’s Creature Shop worked together to bring Five Nights at Freddy’s to the big screen. After months of planning, filming, and production leaks, Blumhouse released the film on Oct. 27, 2023.
A day after the release, my friends and I decided to watch the movie after attending the AGHS homecoming football game.
Filled with apprehension, we entered the movie theater with low expectations due to poor online reviews and prepared ourselves for the worst movie that we had laid our eyes upon. Auditorium Two was the ideal spot to watch the film. With only 20 people in the room at max, it was a warm and cozy environment with no chilly air conditioning. We chose the third row from the bottom to watch the movie, and I sat next to Emliano Paz and Liam Wahl, which was a fantastic decision because of all the jokes we made throughout the movie.
The movie opens with the old security guard’s death, followed by the introduction of the main character, Michael Schmidt, and his struggles. Still recovering from the trauma of witnessing his brother’s kidnapping, Schmidt is about to be evicted from his house, has a sister to take care of, and has just been fired from his job. The movie is slow until the forty-five-minute mark when Schmidt talks with a job recruiter and lands a job at Freddy’s Pizzeria.
My hopes were rising as he started having flashbacks to the day his brother was taken away in a black car, never to be seen again. They rose even more when Vanessa, named after a character from the most recent game, “Security Breach,” awakens Schmidt from a dream about the dead children that haunt the establishment and bring the animatronics to life. Thirty minutes later, the animatronics, Schmidt, his younger sister Abigail, and Vanessa had all built a fort. Regardless of the context, this was hard to watch, and at that moment, I wanted to leave the theater. After this, the movie started to go downhill.
Between the cringy jokes and underwhelming choreography, the FNAF movie was a letdown and somehow worse than I expected. Most people in our party agreed that the movie had very high highs and very low lows, making the movie so bad that it was good. Regardless of the rating I’m giving this movie, I believe it was worth the watch since I, and many others, have waited so long to see Freddy Fazbear on the silver screen.
