Five Nights at Freddy’s
It’s bizarre, I’ve never had this feeling before.
The feeling that of my watch party, I’d be the only person likely to give this movie a score above a five.
This was my prevailing thought exiting the FNaF movie on release day, at the wee hours of half past midnight. Our opinions were mixed, some opinions weren’t, but one thing was clear, we all left the theater feeling very discussive. What we all came to agree on were as followed, the practical effects are something that needs to be lauded and hopefully will spark inspiration for other studios to do the same. Beyond that some opinions differ on how certain things could’ve been and should’ve been treated. It was a fun movie and overall was a fun experience with friends, we saw people cosplaying and just getting enthralled in the all and while the movie might not have delivered on the expectations we had, I think we all agree it was worth doing.
but...
We need to talk about Freddy’s...
Five Nights at Freddy’s /2014/ came out a long time ago, nearly a whole decade, in that time it’s initial fanbase grew up, became adults and for those who stuck with the franchise or fell back into it later in life there’s a feeling that the series never grew up with the fans. From Fazbear Freights books feeling like modern day goosebumps, or the sheer amount of merchandising the series was doing, despite the games for the most part keeping the same audience respect going it was obvious that fnaf was becoming a potential “kids” brand. And this is the problem we see in most things modern fnaf related, too often you see the series butt heads with itself on whether or not it’s gonna cater to it’s older audience or it’s younger one. The never ending flip flop became a big sore subject when the fnaf movie was confirmed to have a pg-13 rating. Among horror fans pg-13 is a scarlet flag, it screams “we wants as much money as possible” or “this is gonna feel like a let down” and you can really feel it with FNAF. They use clever tricks like cut away from gore but keeping the audio, or in one case showing a silhouette of someone being bisected, in order to keep the body count. Some may say that “what was fnaf ever a bloodbath” which while not entirely revisionist does feel like someone falling for the modern day perception that fnaf is a kids thing now. The fnaf movie has alot of problems, a R rating wouldn’t magically fix the movie, but I do think it would give it a better track to follow along. That being said blumhouse doesn’t like risks, and thus didn’t wanna risk a hard R fnaf movie.
Enough gripping about that
Besides perhaps a poor ratings choice, the movie does suffer from some narrative bloat, all the FNAF lore aspects are spot on and genuinely did make for good threads, but all the original liberties taken i.e.: the whole dream theory dream sequences, the custody subplot; they take the pacing all over the place to a degree where very little of the movie feels cohesive. Every night Mike is at Freddy’s he does a dream theory sequence and 3 of them are near identical, feels repetitious and otherwise not worth the screen time. Aside from giving an excuse for the delinquent break in at Freddy’s. the subplot again only serves to take us out of the general flow of the plot. I could go on and recommend a more concise cut but that won’t do much any good. There’s alot of script problems too, some dialogue feels stilted, some conversations almost feel disjointed, but when it works it really works. And that’s what makes the FNAF movie so fascinating. It’s a historic moment, something that’s been in development hell for nearly as long as the games have been a pop culture sensation, and so when all the pieces finally come together in the right way it’s incredible, but so much of the movie is spent putting those pieces together or watching them fall apart.
Fan service lighting round
Not only was this filled to the brim with references and cameos /Sparky the Dog anyone?/ but they were all really well handled. Even as a fairly well versed lore head for fnaf alot of things went over my head in blink and you’d miss it things or full on homages to the graphic novels or the books /like how everyone thought the springlock suit Abby was going in was Circus Baby when it was more likely Ella from the novels. It’s going to be alot of fun rewatching this once the home video release comes out to get a good look at all these Easter eggs.
What else do I have to say?
My expectations for this movie weren’t high, I said from the day the trailer leaked, that all I want is for the effects to look good, the sets to look good, and if we’re lucky I’d like for some Lillard action. two of three ain’t too bad, but in all seriousness, I walked away from FNAF enjoying it thouroughly, and better yet wanting more. Which seems likely, from Afton’s iconic “I always come back,” to the fact in the credits the phrase “C O M E... F I N D... M E...” is said at the end, we should be hopeful for another movie sometime in the future.
Also sorry for the lack of photos this time around, I went out to an actual theater for this /god bless/ and do not have the patience to take screencaps from peacock. I might go back and update this with pictures later once I get ahold of some but I also might save that for a very likely to happen retrospective once the home video release comes out and I can get my grubby mitts on all those special features,