‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’: Prepare for Disappointment

Mike (Josh Hutcherson) is a loner in desperate need of a job, seeing as he got into trouble at his last post for mercilessly pummeling a dude he thought was kidnapping a kid. (He’s obsessed with finding his little brother, who was kidnapped, by lucid dreaming about the incident as often as possible.) His mean aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) is trying to take custody of his little sister Abby (Piper Rubio). A not-at-all-weird-and-suspicious career counselor (Matthew Lillard) advises him to work at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza (if you’re unfamiliar with the video games the movie is based on, think Chuck E. Cheese’s) as a night security guard. Little does Mike know that the animatronic animals that used to delight easily entertained children are haunted by kids who were shoved in the suits after being murdered in order to hide them from the police. And never decomposed and stank up the place, I guess. Unfortunately, the kid\ghost\anthropomorphic mammals are lonely and set their sights on Abby. Can Mike and his new pal, not-at-all-creepy-and-suspicious Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), save her?

I have fewer compliments than gripes, but I do have to admit there are some neat camera techniques, like a scene when a sentient cupcake launches itself at a victim, which match cuts to a pre-victim hucking a hard object at a glass display case. I admire how the filmmakers went with human-controlled puppets (by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, no less) rather than CGI. There’s an adorable cameo by Matthew Patrick, spouting his catchphrase. It’s kinda shoehorned in there, but I love me some MatPat. The performances are acceptable for the most part, with particular standouts being Rubio and Grant Feely as the evilest ghost kid. There’s actually a minimum of scenes where the main character wanders slowly in the dark investigating a noise. Not none, but it’s not half the runtime. (Instead we get way too many sequences of Mike begging the ghost kids in dreamland for information about his brother.) You can spot a cute little theme of the importance of being in charge of your life, rather than sleepwalking through and taking anything you’re handed.

It’s just not scary. There was one scene that at first I thought was pretty eerie, but the next day it hit me that it really mirrors a similar scene in Saw. (Speaking of which, the pizzeria is home to a torture chair that victims are strapped into and it buzzes off their faces, which begs the question, what the fuck kind of goodtimery establishment is this? Who ordered the torture chair?) As can be expected for a PG-13 movie, ancillary characters pop up left and right to sacrifice themselves, but much of the violence is implied rather than shown outright. The jump scares are predictable and underwhelming. The scene when Mike, Abby, Vanessa, and the robots build a blanket fort made me nauseated.

My knowledge of Freddy lore is far surpassed by that of my two oldest children, but even I know that much was changed from the game, which will no doubt piss people off. I’m not a hardcore fan, but I remember how upset I was at the 2000 X-Men movie (we waited sooooo long for it, and it was not faithful whatsoever to the comics!!!!!!), so I feel their pain.

It seems very much too long. For a movie aimed directly at young people, there is an unprecedented amount of angst and character development. It’s also not terribly original. Aside from Saw, it especially brings to mind The Ring, with the shadow-eyed kid being friends with the ghosts and forever drawing their likeness, as well as A Nightmare on Elm Street, with Mike getting cut in his dream and waking up with the same injuries in real life. I also have loads of questions: There are no pictures of Abby in the house, only Mike and his missing brother, suggesting that no one in the family ever got over his disappearance, so where did Abby even come from? Why does a character who is looking for her brother start chasing a rando kid? Does the not-at-all-creepy-and-suspicious career counselor spend all of his totally not-creepy-and-suspicious time as a real career counselor?

It’s a rare film that I would say just don’t see, and this is not one of those. Buuuut when you’re done: If you want gore, watch Saw, if you want humor, try the vastly superior Willy’s Wonderland, and if you want terrifying puppets that do more than act slightly menacing (oh noes, they’re narrowing their eyes again!), how about The Dark Crystal?