The Five Nights at Freddy's movie was pretty neat. A very robotic review.

So when I reviewed the Five Nights at Freddy's Core Collection bundle, I said I wanted to wait until I watched the movie before reviewing that. Well, I watched it. And I want to talk about it, because as the title of this post implies, it was pretty neat. This post exists primarily as a sequel of sorts to the Core Collection review. As such, I won't cover the lore of the franchise as extensively here as I did there. And Five Nights at Freddy's is a horror franchise that was built on a foundation of deep lore. So if you want more information on the games that this movie is based on, go read that post instead.

Image from wikipedia.org

Here's a very simplified recap of the series for those who need a quick refresher. Five Nights at Freddy's, often called FN@F for short, is a horror game franchise created entirely by one guy named Scott Cawthon. Despite working on budget consisting of shoe strings and paper clips, Scott's quirky little horror series exploded seemingly overnight in terms of popularity, and he become a prominent figure in the world of independent video game developers. Basically, the series revolves around a Chuck E Cheese's style pizzeria that is home to a crew of haunted animatronic performers. A movie based on the games was announced all the way back in 2015 as part of a collaboration between Scott and horror movie studio Blumhouse, but the script went through multiple rewrites before Scott and director Emma Tammi settled on a script they actually liked some time in 2021. The movie would finally release on October 26th of 2023.

Our story follows the life of Mike Schmidt (played by Josh Hutcherson), a down-on-his-luck security guard trying his best to provide for his younger sister Abby (played by Piper Rubio) and solve the mysterious disappearance of his brother Garrett. Following an incident where he violently attacked a man that he mistook for a child predator, Mike is fired from his old job. With his Aunt Jane (played by Mary Stuart Masterson) trying to take custody of Abby away, Mike is desperate to prove he can be a functional member of society and actually hold a job. So he takes the next job that becomes available to him regardless of how sketchy it sounds. Which means he gets a job working the night shift at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, the aforementioned Chuck E Cheese's style restaurant. On top of this, Mike's dreams when he sleeps become increasingly weird. Granted, this is deliberate on Mike's part. He is purposely using lucid dream theory (which is a real thing, by the way) to recreate the past and figure out what happened to Garrett. Though, considering this is a Five Nights at Freddy's story, anyone with even a surface level understanding of the lore can guess what happened to him long before the truth is revealed. But most importantly, the animatronic performers start moving by themselves, without any external assistance.

Oh, and Vanessa is here too. Vanessa (played by Elizabeth Lail) is a mysterious police officer that knows an uncomfortable amount of the Pizzeria's history. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, the main reason Vanessa is here is to explain the lore to newcomers. She tells Mike about the Missing Children Incident, in which at least five kids died inside the Pizzeria while Fazbear Entertainment (the Pizzeria's parent company) covered up said deaths and hid them from the public. She reveals the true nature of the animatronics, which are haunted by the ghosts of the dead kids. She tells him about the Spring Lock suits, which are failed prototypes for robot-costume hybrids that can either be worn like a suit or controlled remotely. She even name drops William Afton, the big bad final boss villain of the whole franchise. Literally every bad thing that happens in FN@F can be traced back to William Afton. Which is why the reveal of what happened to Garrett is not surprising in the slightest for people familiar with the lore.

Image from https://freddy-fazbears-pizza.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(Film)/Gallery

But now I want to tell you about the best thing in the whole movie, the animatronics themselves. Every monster here is a real animatronic built and operated by the lovely people from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. While they did use human actors for some scenes that were too complex for normal animatronics, the costuming is so good that I genuinely can't tell the difference. All four of the main monsters look like they stepped right out of the games. Most impressive is Foxy the Pirate Fox. He has by far the most complex design due to his exposed robotic innards, and the Foxy animatronic was so intricate that they needed no less than seven people working together just to make it move around (one for the face, one for the neck, one for each arm, one for each leg, and one to make the whole rig lean forward or backward as needed). Honestly, even if you don't care about the lore or the franchise as a whole, the movie is worth watching just for the animatronics. They are a true spectacle to behold. I do wish they gave the animatronics the pitch-black eyes with the pin-prick white pupils instead of the red eyes they used, since it would look both scarier and more lore accurate, but that is a minor nitpick.

The second best thing about this movie is that it is a real love letter not just to the games, but the fans of said games. There are a lot of references and inside jokes that only make sense to people familiar with the series. And there's some really deep cut references here. Just to give a few examples, there's a scene where Aunt Jane and her gang visit a diner called Sparky's. Sparky was the name of a unused animatronic that was rumored to haunt certain copies of the first game. Scott had to clarify that Sparky wasn't real and that the whole thing was a urban myth that spiraled out of control. Another example, when Mike finds the dead bodies of said gang in the backstage, they've been shoved into costumes based on various monsters from the sequel games and even the spin-off lore novels, such as Shadow Freddy, Eleanora the Doll and Fetch the Dog. But I want to draw attention to two of my favorite references. During the end credits, the movie plays an electropop song simply called The Five Nights at Freddy's Song. This song was a fan-made project made by a band called The Living Tombstone. Evidently, Scott heard the song and loved it so much he decided to make it the official theme song of the whole franchise (with Living Tombstone's permission, of course). And seeing fan-made stuff get a seal of approval from the original creator is always going to be awesome.

The other references I want to talk about extensively happen in that same diner scene described earlier. While coming up with a plan to ruin Mike's life, Aunt Jane is pestered by an overly eager waiter played by Matthew "Mat Pat" Patrick. Mat Pat was the main host of a YouTube channel called Game Theory, which was a web show devoted to solving the biggest mysteries in video game history. Mat Pat has made dozens of videos trying to solve the lore of this series, and has become synonymous with the franchise as a whole. And his character somehow manages to find a way to sneak in the phrase "That's just a Theory!" in casual conversation, a catchphrase that Mat Pat says at least once per video. There's another scene where Abby is riding in a taxi with Golden Freddy, and the taxi driver is played by Cory "CoryxKenshin" Williams, who made humorous play throughs for all the FN@F games. Both Mat Pat and CoryxKenshin are commonly cited as major reasons the franchise got as popular as it did, since these two individuals provided the first game with a lot of Internet publicity. Is the average viewer going to understand who these people are or why they are a big deal? No. Not in the slightest. But again, for people who are involved in the online fan community for this series, these cameos and inside jokes are a pleasant surprise.

Image from imdb.com

The third best thing about the movie is the main villain, William Afton. Spoilers abound for this section. William Afton is played by Matthew Lillard (best known for being the voice of Shaggy from Scooby Do). Afton is first introduced as Steve Raglan, a career consular that not-so-subtly pushes Mike to take the job at the Pizzeria. The reveal that Steve was actually Afton the whole time would have been shocking, had it not been for the fact that Blumhouse spoiled their own twist with the casting. They didn't even bother to pretend that Lillard wasn't playing William Afton. Which means that anyone who knows the lore or paid attention to the casting can guess that the job consular is probably evil. This isn't a bad thing per se, because once William Afton reveals his true nature, he puts on a delightfully hammy performance as a villain. Lillard was clearly having fun being the "bad guy" for once. And honestly, the most quotable parts of the movie come from William Afton. Seriously. Afton yelling things like "SYMMETRY, MY FRIEND!" and "YOU ROTTEN LITTLE BEASTS!" is stuck in my head like an ear worm. And unlike the other characters, William's Spring Trap persona isn't an animatronic. That's a proper costume meant to be worn by a human actor. And apparently, Lillard couldn't see out of the Spring Trap mask, so for all of the scenes where he wore the mask, he was quite literally acting blind. Which I got to imagine must've been an awkward experience, but it was worth it, since William Afton's portrayal here is a major highlight of the movie.

If I had to say anything negative about the movie, I didn't really find the movie that scary. Granted, I'm a long time FN@F fan and I think I've become desensitized to all of Scott's tricks and jump scares. I've mostly stuck around for the lore and monster designs. But a common saying you'll hear about the games is that Five Nights at Freddy's is a "baby's first" horror game. And to put things bluntly, this movie is a "baby's first" horror movie. The violence here is surprisingly tame, especially when compared to other horror movies. The animatronics almost never kill anyone on screen, because the camera conveniently looks away right before the killing blow lands. Or we see only the aftermath of said kills. Don't get me wrong, this movie can be creepy and atmospheric. That's another thing the movie does well. The vibes of the Pizzeria itself are perfect. The issue is that the movie feels like it's holding itself back. Like it has the potential to get super gory and gross but it's really trying not to lose that PG-13 rating so it tones itself down enough to be technically family friendly. Like the goriest thing in the movie is when one of Aunt Jane's gangsters gets the upper half of her body bit off by Freddy, but the bite and remains are framed in shadow to not show any of the grisly details. So the lack of violence leaves me conflicted.  On one hand, I could probably show this movie to my parents and have them not think I'm a masochistic freak for liking something spooky and weird. On the other hand, if you come looking for a thrill, you'll probably not find it here. It's a fairly "safe" movie, all things considered.

I think the biggest divide on your enjoyment of the movie is your view of the table-fort scene. For context, about halfway through the movie, Abby discovers that she can communicate with the ghosts haunting the animatronics through drawings, and being a 10 year old girl, she uses this newfound power to befriend the animatronics and play games with them. This culminates in her roping in Mike and Vanessa into helping the animatronics build a "fortress" out of tables and party supplies. Depending on your perspective, this is either cute and wholesome or cheesy and lame. I'm of the former opinion, myself. Why, you ask? The animatronics are haunted by the ghosts of children. One of the "rules" the ghosts follow is that will not under any circumstances bring deliberate harm to living children. The only reason the animatronics are hostile in the first place is because they hate all adults on principal, and with the only exceptions being the fourth game and the tenth game, every game has you playing as a "grown-up" employee of Fazbear Entertainment. And even then, there's a lore explanation why the Nightmares from FN@F 4 and the Glam Rocks from FN@F: Security Breach are suddenly attacking a child. The former are the physical manifestation of a coma victim's dying dreams (and thus aren't "real"), the latter are being hacked and controlled by a virus. So the ghost kids using their new mechanical bodies to act like kids is lore accurate.

Image from https://freddy-fazbears-pizza.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(Film)/Gallery

So let's answer the biggest question. Is this a good jumping on point for people who are new to Five Nights at Freddy's? Not really, no. This movie carries itself with a "by the fans, for the fans" mentality. It's goal isn't to convince newcomers to invest themselves in the rest of the series, but more so to give long time fans (like me) the cinematic experience they've been waiting literal years for. It does attempt to be newcomer friendly, with things like Vanessa explaining the lore and trying to have a somewhat straightforward narrative compared to the deliberately vague "figure it out yourself!" plot of the games. But there's that signature brand of Scott Cawthon weirdness, like how the drawings work or how the ghost kids can interact/harm Mike directly in his dreams Freddy Krueger style. And indeed, looking at other people's reviews of the FN@F movie, people who are already fans tend to rate the movie more highly than people jumping in for the first time. So I'll give two different ratings, just this once. It's an easy four stars out of five for people who already like Five Nights at Freddy's, but is probably closer to a 3 stars out of five for people who aren't already fans of it. There's enough effort and production quality to prevent the movie from going any lower than that. But again, already being a fan of the series does improve the enjoyment factor.

Five Nights at Freddy's is the property of Scott Cawthon, Steel Wool Studios, Blumhouse and Universal Pictures. None of the images shown here belong to me. Please support the official release.