“Five Nights at Freddy’s” is one night of mediocrity

by Bronson Schmidt ’25

December 5, 2023

The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the writer and do not reflect the views of University School of Nashville or the Peabody Press.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s.”

It’s a name that strikes fear into the hearts of many. For young adults who grew up in 2014, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is a cultural cornerstone that’s amassed a huge fanbase— and due to their cultlike loyalty, the pressure to deliver was high for the series’ first movie. Regardless of that pressure, however, it seems that the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie had nowhere to go but down the mediocre rabbit hole of overly ambitious video game adaptations. 

“Five Nights at Freddy’s” (otherwise known as FNaF) was first incarnated in August 2014, under the humble beginnings of Scott Cawthon. The game, a simple first-person click horror, quickly rose to internet fame. Its gameplay revolves around fending off four bloodthirsty animatronics from the player’s security office, using cameras and metal doors to protect themselves while their office’s power slowly drains.

The game’s abundance of jumpscares and distinct character designs made it an instant hit. Cawthon, recognizing the game’s popularity, continued the series through a number of sequels based on the original title. As of 2023, FNaF has eight games, twenty-eight books, and hundreds of plushies and figurines.

But despite all of its growth, the original Five Nights At Freddy’s still holds the most notoriety in the greater public eye. This is the game that the movie, in theory, is based around.

I had played and followed the first game since its beginning in 2014, so I had high expectations when I walked into the movie theater. And, as it turns out, there was almost nothing to look forward to. Walking out of the theater, I felt like I had just watched some pseudo-campy B-movie that couldn’t decide if it was horror or a fairy tale. The movie felt like it had not only failed me as a FNaF fan, but also as a moviegoer. 

This was, in large part, due to the film’s lackluster writing. The general plot of the movie follows a young man named Mike Schmidt as he navigates raising his kid sister, Abby, while he struggles to find a job. This struggle, in combination with being recently fired and a cash-grabbing aunt looking to steal Abby’s child services money, leads Mike to find only job available: working as a a security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. As he works the night shift there, mysterious occurrences begin to haunt him in his dreams, where he meets the child spirits of the possessed animatronics.  

This seems, in theory, like a great adaptation of the franchise. However, what this description doesn’t mention are the two characters introduced later on in the movie that are not present in the source material, and the lack of plot consistency as the story flips-flops between different ideas.

The way that these aforementioned new characters (a security guard named Vanessa and an evil mastermind behind it all) are introduced feels completely unnatural and totally throws off all of the ideas introduced in the first half of the movie.

Strangely irrelevant plotlines and underdeveloped stories convolute “Five Nights at Freddy’s” plot to an annoying extent. After watching the movie, I think that the biggest problem here is that the team at Blumhouse Productions were trying to do too much, too quickly.

One reason I say this is how a lot of the characters’ stories are resolved and introduced. It seems like many characters only served in the movie to conveniently move the plot along, making their involvement seem out of place and awkward. The unnatural behavior of many characters is only exacerbated by the plot’s convolution.

The “Five Nights At Freddy’s” movie is trying to accomplish two things: to tell a new story of Mike Schmidt, and to reimagine an old story of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. However, this is just too much for one movie.

On one hand, Mike Schmidt’s character has a lot of promise. The movie introduces an interesting concept involving Mike escaping into his dreams to try and find his brother’s killer. This is something never explored in any other FNaF media and offers an unexpected plot development. This story is developed for the first chunk of the movie, until halfway through, when it kind of just… stops. The storyline ends as an anticlimactic excuse for a sequence at the pizzeria, and serves as another example of the movie taking novel concepts and using them as convenient excuses for why things happen with the animatronics.

Because of this sharp switch from Mike’s life to the pizzeria, the second half of the movie feels wildly disconnected from the first half. All of the exposition, with Abby’s fate and Mike’s unemployment, is just filler to lead up and provide explanations for how the characters got to the final pizzeria scenes. 

This final pizzeria scene may just be the worst of all. There are some really impressive cinematic moments, and the action was tense and well crafted enough to be interesting. But the film’s climax introduces a completely new character, one that completely breaks the movie’s flow and immersion.

For those who haven’t watched yet… spoilers await!!!

Longtime FNaF fans recognized this bunny-suited character as William Afton, the mastermind child serial killer that created the animatronics and the Freddy Fazbear restaurant franchise. While Vanessa (being the convenient plot explainer that the writers set her up as) does explain that Afton, her father, was the man behind the slaughter and Mike’s brother’s kidnapper, this still does nothing to explain what he’s doing in a bunny suit, how on Earth the animatronics are possessed, or why any of this happened in the first place. 

All of these questions loomed in the games as well, but they were uncovered over years of careful evaluation of the games’ story, a mystery which made the story engaging and unique. But in the movie, there’s no mystery at all; Afton is just served to the viewer on a silver platter, destroying any semblance of an engaging lore. Afton is a fan favorite character, and his inclusion at the end of the movie confirmed the worst fear I had going into the movie.

FNaF is a movie filled with service.

I had really hoped that the movie wouldn’t succumb to it, as it’s such an easy and unrewarding way to make money and not risk anything. But unfortunately, the FNaF movie is filled with it. From Afton’s inclusion in the end, to Vanessa’s inclusion as a character, to a cameo from Youtubers MattPatt and CoryxKenshin, so much of this movie relies on fans’ previous knowledge and trust of the franchise. 

But unfortunately, even fan service can’t save how poorly written this movie is. The movie’s plot, because it includes Afton, jumps in between all the games instead of just focusing on one story or one game specifically. Any semblance of deeper nuance is lost, because so many aspects of the overarching story are crushed down into bite sized, movie palatable chunks. Despite its fan service, it still manages to not satisfy fans because of how much their beloved franchise has been grossly oversimplified.

All of the movie’s contradictions and unnecessary fluff make it lose any sense of identity as well. It isn’t horror media, as the vast majority of FNaF games are, because it only has two or three scary scenes in it. But it also isn’t a comedy, because it only has a few jokes. Not only does it fail to commit to a plot, but it also fails to commit to a genre.

Overall, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” had potential. There were years of source material to draw from, a twenty million dollar budget, and all the time in the world to release — after all, the script took eight years to finish. But by trying to appeal to everyone, the film appeals to no one. It has too many plot ideas in one movie, so therefore the overall point loses significance. A large chunk of its characters only serve as plot devices, and when paired with out of nowhere plot developments, the movie didn’t give its audience any reason to care. “Five Nights at Freddy’s” isn’t a bad movie, but it’s not great. And that’s what makes it so disappointing to watch- the weight of its failed expectations crushes any chance it had of being more than mediocre.

I give Five Nights at Freddy’s 3.5/10.