After years of waiting, Five Nights at Freddy’s is officially here—but was it worth the wait?
Well, for some, just seeing the franchise come alive is enough to bring joy. So, it’s a good thing for those people that they’ll get exactly that: just enough.
Is the FNAF movie as miserable as its Rotten Tomatoes score might suggest? Absolutely not; it’s a fun, enjoyable gateway horror film with some extremely marketable visuals.
But there’s no denying that the package as a whole should have been better. Let’s start with where the project shines the brightest: it’s animatronics.
There’s no question about it: the animatronics are the stars of the show. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop did an incredible job bringing these now iconic designs to life.
It’s difficult to imagine how they could have been portrayed any better for their depiction in the movie. They’re accurate, creepy, and feel like the real deal.
Not only do they look great while static, but they shine in motion as well, which might be a little jarring to some. In the original games, the animatronics only really move when the player isn’t watching.
As great as the animatronics are, this is a story at the end of the day, and stories need characters. In that way, Five Nights at Freddy’s falls a little flat.
Leading the movie is Josh Hutcherson’s Mike, who is the generic troubled protagonist haunted by unresolved childhood trauma. His struggles are depicted fairly exhaustively, which would be okay if the character’s storyline landed in any satisfying way—which it doesn’t.
The movie never truly takes Mike’s character anywhere interesting, and he does spend a good chunk of the film re-living the same middling dream sequence.
As for Hutcherson’s performance, it’s fine, but don’t go in expecting anything Oscar-worthy. That sentiment can be said across the board for the whole cast, though Matthew Lillard clearly had some fun in the movie.
It’s Elizabeth Lail’s Vanessa who could have used the most improvement. She’s oddly shoved into the story without much sense offered as to why she’s even there in the first place.
Even as the movie fills viewers in on some key information, there are still plenty of questions that don’t get answers. In turn, this leads to Vanessa’s big moments and revelations landing with a dull thud.
At the end of the day, FNAF doesn’t leave much worth remembering besides its well-crafted animatronics and that nostalgic feeling of seeing this world come to life—which is exactly where the movie succeeds the most, outside of its killer machines.
The project has a clear respect and adoration for the franchise’s overall lore. Hardcore fans will absolutely love everything the movie throws at them, including its many twists, no matter how predictable or questionable they might be within the context of this particular incarnation.
While it’s great for some fans that the film caters to them, it’s also one of its fatal flaws. By the time the big twists occur in the third act, it feels like it is ticking off a list. There seems to be very little care in putting the work into making these plot points feel satisfying, believable, and logical in this fictional world.
Some won’t mind it, but it’s easy to see how many will call out the flawed logic as a key reason why the story didn’t work for them. It doesn’t help that there’s a balance between silliness and seriousness that the movie never truly gets right.
Five Nights at Freddy’s isn’t an insult by any means, and a healthy amount of people will enjoy their time at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza—as the film’s box office performance seems to prove. But the package could and should have been better, so hopefully, those standards can be raised by the time an inevitable sequel makes itself a reality.
Five NIghts at Freddy’s is now playing in theaters worldwide and streaming on Peacock.
