Pomegranate Seeds: 6/10
On Friday, October 27, 2023, people lined up outside of cinemas to watch the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie after a nearly 10-year wait. People went dressed as their favorite characters and even went as far as stealing movie posters from cinemas, and now comes the question: Was this 9-year wait truly worth it?
The first Five Nights at Freddy’s game originally came out in the year 2014, immediately sparking the attention of many video game fanatics and quickly became one of the most popular games on the internet thanks to popular YouTubers who shared their experience while playing said game. Some of these YouTubers are Markiplier, Game Theory, and CoryxKenshin, who both made appearances in the movie. In the video game, the player acts as a new night guard for Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a once popular family place where children would come play and enjoy the company of four animatronic robots: Chica the Chicken, Foxy the Pirate, Bonnie the Bunny, and Freddy Fazbear himself. The player is then given one task and one task only: to survive the night as they watch over the now-abandoned pizzeria. And to watch the animatronics for the duration of their six-hour night shift. Well- that’s two tasks.
During their six-hour shift, the player must check cameras, shut doors, and do anything possible to ensure their own survival. Once the clock hits six, the player is named the victor and they have won the game… until the next night when they have to do it all over again except at a higher difficulty. Seeing the success the first game had brought, Scott Cawthon (the creator of the FNAF franchise) set out to create eight more games and a book series, all following a complex storyline that players online are still trying to decipher and understand to this day.
The FNAF movie follows security guard Mike Schmidt and his sister through the entirety of the movie with important characters like Vanessa the cop and “Steve Raglan” the career counselor. Mike needs a job and “Steve” gives him an offer at Freddy Fazbears Pizza Place. Throughout the movie, Mike tries to go back in the memory of when his brother was kidnapped and see if he can find out who kidnapped Garrett.
Surprisingly there weren’t a lot of jumpscares considering that the game’s main plus was its jumpscares. They also didn’t really follow the canon like in the games which was sad but there was a great cameo from MatPat from Game Theory. On Rotten Tomatoes, fans liked the movie but they don’t think it could stand up on its own two feet as a movie; hopefully, they make a better sequel with more jumpscares. There also were some moments that were kinda bad, when Vanessa, Mike, and Abby were having a good time. Abby gets shocked and then Vanessa just says, “If you bring Abby here again I’m going to shoot you.” That’s some bad writing, but the actress did a great job delivering the line. Some good moments were the practical effects, there was basically no CGI or green screen, and the pizzeria and the animatronics looked amazing when they were shown on the big screen.
While the movie did not follow the already established storyline the games and books had created, it wasn’t an entirely awful movie, although this doesn’t mean it was very great either. For what it’s worth, its budget was 20 million and it made 130 million in the box office, marking it the biggest horror movie opening this year as well as Peacock’s most watched films of all time.
Considering that it was on a relatively low budget and was in the making for a long time, the end result wasn’t too bad. But the movie had its moments with some effects and some off dialogue choices, which ultimately resulted in the movie to be pretty average or just below. It’s mostly for the fans who have been following Scott’s journey for nearly 10 years and finally rewarding their patience and devotion with putting Foxy and Bonnie on the big screen. The movie can also serve as a farewell to Scott Cawthon himself, who announced his retirement before releasing the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie and will no longer be working on FNAF and will instead most likely hand it over to another game developer. Overall, 6/10 Pomegranate seeds.
