Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023), directed by Emma Tammi, is an unfortunate addition to the list of subpar video game adaptations. The popular franchise has finally found its way into the film industry, although some may argue that this adaptation has come too late; I am a member of “some.” 

If this film were a liquor bottle, it’d be on the bottom shelf – and you might ask yourself, why did I make an alcohol comparison? Well, it’s because this movie made me want a glass of whiskey to forgive and forget. Aside from some impressive animatronics and a decent performance by Josh Hutcherson, there is little to behold from this monstrosity of a faux horror film. It boasts average technicals and a subpar script from the game’s very own creator, Scott Cawthon. Additionally, despite being a full hour and a half shorter, this film felt much longer than its contemporary, the three-and-a-half-hour-long Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). It’s unfortunate, though, that none of this matters, considering that Five Nights at Freddy’s has more than made up its budget in its first few days.

Five Nights at Freddy’s follows Mike (Hutcherson), a down-on-his-luck guy who looks after his younger sister, Abby (Piper Rubio). Mike and Abby’s parents are gone, and their  Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) wants to take custody of Abby, despite Abby preferring Mike as her guardian — even though she only makes this clear through her drawings. After Mike assaults a man he mistakenly thinks is a kidnapper, he struggles to find the employment needed to get his Aunt off his back. Eventually, Mike talks to a career counselor, Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard), who helps him land a night security job at a defunct amusement restaurant called Freddy Fazbear’s. 

Fans of the series — or anyone who has been on social media since 2013 — will know what each successive night at Freddy Fazbear’s means for an individual’s chances of survival. With each night’s progression, Mike discovers more and more unusual pieces of Freddy Fazbear’s, including the establishment’s frightening animatronics named  Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, and Foxy. 

On his first night, Mike falls asleep and dreams a recurring dream where he tries to identify the kidnapper behind his younger brother’s disappearance. When he dreams in Freddy Fazbear’s, though, he finds that five children have now invaded his dream, and he futilely questions them on whether they saw his brother’s kidnapper. The next night, Mike is injured in his dream by one of the children and subsequently meets a police officer named Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), who we quickly learn has the easiest job in the world as her beat appears only to contain Freddy Fazbear’s and its parking lot.

Following a nonsense MatPat cameo–which interestingly garnered enough applause from my theater to rival the opening weekend of a phase three MCU film–a conspiring Aunt Jane and Abby’s Babysitter try to get Mike fired. The scene that immediately follows looks like it could have been a completely unrelated fan film that the creators of the games wanted to include in this movie. Aunt Jane’s cronies break into Freddy Fazbear’s, and they are all unceremoniously killed by the animatronics in unimaginative ways – with the exception of the final kill that will have you in pieces.

Mike now has to bring Abby to work and discovers Abby has now befriended all of the animatronics, and the rest of the plot unfolds.

The best way to summarize this film is that there’s not enough camp to be funny, and there’s not enough horror to be scary. I wish I could say this was a horror film for kids, but at an hour and fifty minutes long, the film drags on too long and doesn’t seem befitting of a younger demographic’s attention span. There was no reason this film needed to be almost two hours long.

This story got bogged down in high aspirations and an ever-expanding lore that has brought out more questions than answers. With all due respect to Scott Cawthon, his screenplay reads as if it was a first-year screenwriting student’s final assignment — not bad enough for an F, but not good enough for anything beyond a B+.

If you want a similar premise and a significantly better experience, my biggest recommendation would be to watch Willy’s Wonderland (2021). But if you have Peacock or enjoy a theater outing and have two hours to spare, then maybe check this out. But I wouldn’t make it a priority.

Review Courtesy of Tate Fowler

Feature Image Credit to Universal Pictures via IMDb