Look, I get it. I’m not a video game player in any way, so my knowledge of the Five Nights at Freddy’s series of games is zilch. I do know it’s a game aimed at younger players, and as a result, the Blumhouse producers behind the PG-13 rated film adaptation went for something a little tamer than your average blood-soaked venture. That choice ultimately hurts the movie.
The film follows the troubled Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), who has a great many anger issues that result in him getting fired from job after job, which he can’t afford because he’s taking care of his much younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio). Through an employment agency run by Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard), Mike finds out about a security guard job at an abandoned pizza place called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, which for some reason has an arcade and animatronic animals who play music and occasionally try to murder any human in the joint.
Aside from killer robots, Mike’s troubles are legion, but they all stem from the childhood kidnapping of his younger brother, a crime that was never solved and is the only thing he dreams about when he sleeps. Mike blames himself for his brother’s disappearance, and the dreams become more vivid when he starts working at the Freddy’s, resulting in his being convinced that this place holds the key to figuring out what happened to his brother and perhaps even saving him. The human-sized robot animals start coming to life and terrorizing anyone who steps into the decrepit building, with the exception of sister Abby and Venessa, a local police officer (Elizabeth Lail) who seems to know a lot more about Freddy’s than she first lets on.
Directed by Emma Tammi (The Wind) and adapted in part by the game’s creator Scott Cawthon, Five Nights at Freddy’s is easily one of the dullest and slowest horror films in recent memory, making it a complete slog to sit through. There are few things less scary than watching robot animals slowly chase someone through a rundown diner. They move slower than the slowest slow-moving zombies, so it never seems like much of an issue to get away from them at any given point. There’s also a painfully unnecessary subplot about Mike and Abby’s aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) attempting to get custody of Abby away from Mike.
Even as the film gets closer to uncovering all of the mysteries behind Freddy’s and its small army of animatronic creatures with death on their minds, it doesn’t really help pick up the pace or make the movie any more exciting or worthy of your time and money. A horror film doesn’t have to be R rated to be good, but Five Nights at Freddy’s feels like 30 minutes of interesting ideas padded out to almost two hours with subplots about child abduction and Mike’s anger-management issues—issues that never really get channelled into fighting against something actually threatening him. If you think the general premise of this film sounds an awful lot like the 2021 Nicolas Cage film Willy’s Wonderland, you’d be right. And at least that film had a silent Cage being stoic and weird for no apparent reason. I’d rather watch that again than take another trip into Freddy’s.
The film is now playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock.
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