HALLOWEEN 2K23 BONUS #1: A Review of "Five Nights at Freddy's" (2023)

"Hey kid, your mom said finish your pizza before you run off to play the arcade games. Dont'chu dare get up from that
seat until you do."

SURPRISE! A bonus for all of you to enjoy! We're only three days from the big day this year, and I unfortunately still have many posts to make. I've just been so exhausted week-to-week, night-to-night, it's hard to keep track of. I'm thinking of taking off December from my Blogger to recharge and think of new ideas. I think that's an idea getting more and more approval internally from me.

"I've got a good job for you, Mike. It's a real SCREAM."
"Is this Matthew Lillard?"
"No, this is Steve Raglan."

For our first bonus review this year, I thought I'd have a little fun. This movie came out only Thursday, forty-eight hours ago, both in theaters and on the streaming service Peacock. (Shout out to Peacock). Based on the popular horror point-and-click games starting from 2014 of the same name, this is 2023's Five Nights at Freddy's. A security guard gets a post at an abandoned pizzeria and finds its animatronic inhabitants try to hunt him down each night, and the key is to survive from 12a to 6a. That's the premise of the game. Simple, and you survive five nights. Six if you survive all five, seven, if you survive the sixth. Confusing, but hey I was able to pick it up. With a simple premise like that, I was imagining they weren't going to make a very good movie out of it. Before I give my honest opinion, having only gotten into the games just this past year, let's go through the plot as usual and I'll introduce you to the lore before I give my opinion on the movie.

Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), a mall security guard, is fired after assaulting a negligent father who he mistook for a kidnapper. He is sent to visit career counselor Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard), who offers him work as a night guard at an abandoned family diner known as Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. Though initially reluctant, Mike accepts the offer after social services threaten to take custody of his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio) and pass her over to his estranged aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson). On his first night, Mike falls asleep and dreams about the kidnapping and presumed murder of his brother Garrett (Lucas Grant), before seeing five children who witnessed the kidnapping, but they run away. On the second night, Mike's dream is repeated, but when he attempts to confront one of the children, he is attacked and wakes up. Mike meets police officer Vanessa Shelly (Elizabeth Lail), who notices his wounds and patches him up. Vanessa shows him around the restaurant and tells him that the place closed in the 1980s after five children were murdered there; the bodies were never found.

"I just heard one of the animatronics say something. It said...
'It's Fazbear'ing time'."
"Mike, it's 9a, you're 3 hours over, go home."

On the third night, Jane hires a group of juvenile delinquents to vandalize the restaurant in order to get Mike fired, an act which would enable her to gain custody of Abby. As the break-in occurs, the restaurant's animatronic mascots – Freddy Fazbear (Kevin Foster), Chica (Jessica Weiss), Foxy (puppet, voiced by Roger Joseph Manning Jr.), and Bonnie (Jade Kindar-Martin) – come alive and murder the delinquents. One of the vandals is Abby's babysitter Max (Kat Conner Sterling), which requires Mike to bring Abby to his next shift. When the mascots activate that night, they befriend Abby, but are hostile toward and corner Mike and Vanessa, though they survive. Mike discovers that the mascots are possessed by the ghosts of the murdered children, whose leader, a blonde boy, consistently mentions a "yellow rabbit".

In between shifts, Mike takes sleeping pills to help him visualize Garrett's kidnapping, which went cold years ago. On the fourth night, Vanessa panics over Abby's increasing friendship with the mascots and warns Mike to not bring her to the restaurant again. Mike gets Jane to babysit Abby, much to Abby's frustration, as he goes back to the restaurant during the day and overdoses on his sleeping pills. Inside the dream, the five children appear again and tell Mike that he can stay with Garrett forever, in exchange for Abby. At Mike's house, Jane is murdered by "Golden Freddy", a variant of Freddy Fazbear possessed by the blonde boy, who takes Abby back to the restaurant by hitching a ride with a taxi driver. Mike is repeatedly attacked in his dream and wakes up strapped to a torture device that attempts to tear off his face. He escapes the device and flees the restaurant with Vanessa's help.

"Welcome to Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. A place where
Steam games can become surprise hits and rake in dough
for you off weird ideas for years to come!"

After Mike explains his dream, Vanessa reveals that she is the daughter of William Afton, the serial killer who murdered Garrett and the other five children, and that his victims' souls and the mascots are under his control. Realizing that William is planning to murder Abby, Mike rushes to the restaurant with the necessary equipment to disable the mascots. At the restaurant, Chica attempts to murder Abby but Mike arrives and saves her. Mike is attacked and separated from Abby. The mascots are eventually defeated, but they are reactivated by Steve, who arrives wearing the "yellow rabbit" suit. Steve reveals himself to be William before knocking Mike unconscious. Knowing that the mascots need to understand the truth, Abby draws a picture of William murdering the children. She shows her drawing to the mascots, and they turn on William. The Cupcake, another one of the mascots, bites off part of William's suit, which triggers the suit's internal springlock mechanisms which severely wounds him. The mascots drag him into the back room where the blonde boy locks the door. Mike and Abby carry a wounded Vanessa out of the restaurant, though she falls into a coma afterwards and is taken to a hospital. Mike continues to look after Abby and they return to their normal lives.

... and ta-da, they have indeed survived "five nights" at Freddy's. So, when I play the game (at the time of writing this, I've beaten six nights of Five Nights at Freddy's and three nights of Five Nights at Freddy's 2. I was dragging my feet through the games trying to get hyped for the movie, and quite frankly, I was very excited to view it. I streamed it on Peacock last night, absorbed as much as I could and once it was done, I indeed had some thoughts. I did enjoy a lot of the characters, Mike was a great casting, Vanessa while I appreciated her presence I kept laughing about like "Isn't she supposed to be on patrol?" Steve/William played by the great Matthew Lillard was a very welcome portrayal since I love Lillard in practically everything he does. Abby had some quippy one-liners that were amusing, but she was also kind of the reason why I was a bit annoyed with the story's direction.

"These animatronics are real-to-life, just like they appear in
the game. We've gone as far as using live children inside to
imitate the soul possession."
*Muffled* "Director lady? I can't breathe in here!"
"PIPE DOWN!"

While I purely and whole-heartedly understand it would be very difficult to make a movie based off the simple premise of watching security cameras, keeping tabs on moving electronics, and then shutting doors and flipping on lights when animatronics get near to protect your own ass... repeatedly for five nights... some of the elements they stuck in felt kind of cliche to me. The whole "child and their robot" arc was unnecessary and kind of torpedoed the movie's chances at being scary to me. I get it's PG-13 and Blumhouse came out recently saying "Well it's also a horror movie for children", which is a fascinating take, but at the same time that means it isn't really scary at all. Not only with the scene on Night 3 when they're building a fort out of tables in the pizzeria... which was just silly in my opinion... but with the movie in general. Thankfully there's hardly any gore, if any at all, and barely any swearing/cursing. So it is a horror movie for kids, much like the games are scary games kids can play.

The movie's final ten minutes try to save the story though, and with the whole "dream to remember what happened" Nightmare on Elm Street shtick wearing thin to me and not really paying off when the discovery of who Spring Bonnie was came outside of the dream world anyway, the final ten minutes really did redeem much of my ire with the story. I did enjoy Five Nights at Freddy's the movie, it is entertaining, the set design is TRÉ MAGNIFIQUE, same with the Jim Henson Creature Shop animatronic puppets used for the mascots in the movie... top notch work by that facility once again. The aesthetic saves the movie, and the scares/kills are gripping enough, even if toned down or off-screen to save the PG-13 rating, even if the movie feels overstuffed with cliche sillyness just to make a good runtime.

Check it out if you have a night off or heck if you're a cool parent who has kids. It's pretty good, and by kids' standards it's a wild ride. Peacock, or in theaters everywhere.