Five Nights at Freddy’s

Five Nights at Freddy’s manages to deliver exactly what everyone thought it would. A garbage movie based on a videogame marketed at kids.

Based on the popular video game series by Scott Cawthon, this movie is directed by Emma Tammi, who doesn’t exactly have a brilliant track record. Her last few movies have all been mid at best. But to be honest, the problems don’t just lie in the directing of this film.

I assume the idea was to replicate the success of M3GAN, a movie that did very well because of its viral marketing. Oh, and it was a fun movie to watch. Even if Blumhouse Productions once again aimed for a PG-13 rating. And that is one of the biggest gripes about Five Nights at Freddy’s. Taking a horror property and then stripping the, well, horror from it, is bonkers. And probably explains why it’s on 29% on RT.

Here’s my rather verbal opinion which seems to have upset a few people looking at the dislikes for it.

There is suggested gore in the film. Like when one of the robots ‘eats’ one half of someone. But it’s done in shadows, literally. Instead of relishing the ridiculous premise of animatronic puppets who have the souls of children powering them, you get half-arsed shadows.

Acting

There’s nothing wrong with the acting here. It’s all perfectly acceptable. I really like Josh Hutcherson in this, though he was far better in Future Man. He does an amicable job with a script that appears to have been penned by a toddler. As does his in-film sister. Though trying to figure out how he is so much older than her will lead to a nonsensical dead end. They spend far too much time on his dreams than they do on the actual puppets, and it grows tiresome, very quickly.

Why so mid?

Five Nights at Freddy’s does the worst thing possible in a movie of this genre. It’s neither scary or gory and doesn’t even offer one jump scare. It’s also painfully unfunny. This is not how you make a horror movie. There is also zero motivation for the antagonist. Like, absolutely none. Not even an attempt to explain how, or why he does what he does.

The amazing thing is, it killed it at the box office. Because of course it did. It aimed at the lowest common denominator, teens, which is fine. As already mentioned, M3GAN is a brilliant movie. But they just didn’t bother with this movie.

Final verdict

Five Nights at Freddy’s

3/10