Review: 'Five Nights at Freddy's' is mostly for the franchise's fans, but has a few scares for the rest of us
The not-too-messy horror thriller “Five Nights at Freddy’s” grapples with the same problem any movie based on a popular franchise does: How much effort will go into satisfying the fans of the property? And how far will the filmmakers go to bring the uninitiated along for the ride?
In this case, the seesaw definitely tips toward fan service, though there are some horror pleasures that anyone can appreciate.
The movie starts with Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), a guy who needs a job to keep himself and his kid sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), fed and sheltered — and to keep their scheming Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) from taking custody of Abby. Mike has a complicated routine to get to sleep each night, which we learn has to do with a childhood incident when his little brother, Garrett (Lucas Grant), was kidnapped during a camping trip and was never seen again.
When he sees a career counselor (Matthew Lillard), he reluctantly accepts the one job offered: Night security guard at a long-closed arcade, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. When Mike starts his first night, he he encounters the weirdness of the place, in the form of animatronic figures performing ‘80s pop music. It’s up to Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), a cop patrolling the area, who fills in more of the story — of how Freddy’s was shut down after five children there disappeared.
The children soon show up in Mike’s dreams, and Mike thinks they might be able to help him figure out what happened to Garrett. But the price of finding out could involve losing Abby.
Like many people, my familiarity with the source material, the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” video game franchise started by Scott Cawthon, is through my kids. They don’t play the horror game, which is infamous for its random jump scares, but they watch YouTube game players walking through the game (and its sequels).
Director Emma Tammi (who made the unsettling 2018 frontier horror drama “The Wind”), who shares screenwriting credit with Cawthon and Seth Cuddeback, squeezes out some frights in one sequence in the early part of the movie — when some hooligans try to rob Freddy’s and encounter the menacing robots. The rest of the movie is more about the psychological horror, and only succeeds fitfully at building that tension.
On a technical level, the movie is a curiosity, thanks to the animatronic work by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, which gives Freddy and his pals a tactile menace that computer-animated monsters wouldn’t be able to replicate.
The best way to enjoy “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is to go when there’s an audience made up of the game’s fans — in part because it’s fun to hear them react at the numerous in-jokes peppered through the movie. (For example, an overly cheerful diner waiter is played by Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, one of those YouTube stars.) It’s one of those horror movies that is more fun in a crowd.
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‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’
★★★
Opens Friday, October 27, in theaters, and streaming on Peacock. Rated PG-13 for strong violent content, bloody images and language. Running time: 110 minutes.