by Tyler Smith
Few things are more frustrating for a film critic than having to review a movie that is “for the fans.” While many films made with a built-in fan base try to be accessible enough to bring in a wider audience, some of these films have no such ambition. They are content to appeal only to their pre-existing audience, usually at the expense of coherent storytelling and fully- developed characters. Emma Tammi’s Five Nights at Freddy’s is based on a very popular video game franchise and, it would appear, has no desire to move beyond that. Characters make winking references and the camera will linger over certain images in a way that suggests meaning without ever going to the trouble of actually creating any.
The story begins with world-weary Mike (Josh Hutcherson) struggling to take care of his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio). With the parents out of the picture, Mike fights against his unsympathetic aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson) to retain custody, which is hanging by a thread after he loses his job. Now desperate, Mike hastily takes a job as a night watchman at an out-of-business pizza place called Freddy Fazbear’s. Once famous for games, prizes, and, most notably, animatronic creatures that perform for the audience, Freddy’s has been slowly decaying after going under decades earlier. The job seems simple enough but becomes lethally complicated as Mike discovers that the animatronics have a life of their own and have no reservations about brutally killing anybody they deem a threat. Mike’s investigation into this strange situation eventually leads him to a series of unsolved child abductions that occurred years before.
In simply describing the plot, we already run into a fatal flaw of the film: an overly-convoluted storyline. “Killer robots run amok” is a premise that writes itself. It hits the basic beats of realization, survival, resistance, and victory. The specifics may be different, but checking off these simple story points is really all one needs to create a perfectly satisfying horror movie. Westworld, The Terminator, and even Chopping Mall understood this, but it apparently eludes Five Nights at Freddy’s which adds a supernatural element that it neither fully grasps nor knows what to do with. This lack of understanding also applies to the robots themselves, which veer drastically from monstrous to sympathetic based on the needs of the scene, creating a “have its cake and eat it, too” quality that leaves the audience wondering what it’s supposed to feel.
All of this confusion might well come from the film’s uncertainty about what it’s supposed to be. It clearly desires to be a frightening horror movie, while simultaneously trying to appeal to a younger audience. These conflicting goals regularly trip each other up, resulting in a film that is perhaps too intense for kids but far too tame for adults. It is a classic blunder made by too many mainstream films: trying to do so many things that it eventually accomplishes none.
Of course, for some, the mere existence of the film is accomplishment enough. To certain Freddy’s fans, inconsistent stories and contradictory tones matter infinitely less than the mere fact that their favorite game has been adapted into a film. This is the ultimate good that excuses all evils and perhaps this is what the studio was banking on when it decided to produce such a mediocre movie; brand loyalty, lowered expectations, and blind acceptance on the part of the audience.
