This review of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie contains spoilers.
I honestly don’t even know where to start with the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (FNaF) movie besides that I had such a great time watching it that I can guarantee you I will be seeing it again in the near future. I will also put the disclaimer now that I’ve been following the FNaF franchise for years, so I definitely fall under the “was a fan before watching” category.
For those of you who are out of the loop, the FNaF movie is based off the FNaF games by Scott Cawthon, and began development in 2015 before shortly thereafter entering production hell. The movie transferred eventually to Blumhouse, and several production staff changes later, the movie finally started filming.
The first thing I want to talk about is the cast of the movie. Josh Hitcherson AND Matthew Lillard?! I’ve seen one too many edits of their respective characters that make me question some people’s taste, but both were great choices for their respective roles, and I felt that they both did a great job. Honestly, one of my concerns for the movie before I knew about any of the people on the cast would be cheap acting, but the FNaF movie provided nothing but quality characters.
Overall, I will say that the FNaF movie was delightfully ridiculous, and I enjoyed every second of it. Can someone explain to me why Chica’s cupcake has such a ridiculous kill count? Or how Freddy bit off the entirety of Max’s torso? The FNaF movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, and I think that’s one of the great parts of it. If it had leaned a bit more into horror or removed some of the campier bits, I don’t think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much. The fact that MatPat from Game Theory and CoryxKenshin are both in this movie shows that the creators were simply having fun with the project.
The amount of easter eggs in this movie was also a great homage to the series as a whole. At the ice cream place in the mall, the mascot is Chica’s Magic Rainbow from FNaF World; the diner MatPat works at is “Sparky’s” and his name is Ness; one of the guys who breaks into Freddy’s is wearing a “Midnight Motorist” shirt; and the list just goes on and on. It just shows that the people who made this movie really took the time to put in all the little details that will make viewers nudge their friends during the movie and point the easter eggs out (it’s me, I did this).
Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of the FNaF movie is how split people are about it. As of writing, the FNaF movie has a 29 percent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes while the audience score is at 88 percent. I know, we hate Rotten Tomatoes but it’s a very clear example of how split people are about this movie. The general opinion seems to be that if you already like the franchise, you’ll like this movie, and if you haven’t had much exposure to FNaF, you won’t, but I have also heard the opposite.
Honestly, I think people just need to enjoy things more. Sure, the movie wasn’t exactly a horror movie (it was PG-13, so I don’t know what people were expecting), but it would be boring to watch a perfect recreation of the games. I don’t think the FNaF movie was trying to be anything it wasn’t; it was a slightly edgy movie meant for fans of the franchise to enjoy and to be an introduction to some of the lore for newcomers. So many of the reviews describe the plot as confusing or boring, and quite frankly, they’re wrong. The movie states pretty much all the relevant plot points, and you don’t really need to understand really any of the games’ lore to know what’s happening.
So if you have any semblance of appreciation for the FNaF franchise or you’re just looking for a ridiculous movie to watch, please check out the FNaF movie — I promise it’s worth your time. Here’s to looking forward to a second FNaF movie that will release in 2032!
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