Review: The Five Nights at Freddy’s Game Was More Interesting Than the Movie. (Spoilers)

I think the first time I heard about FNAF was in a postcard from some former friends of mine when I was around 10 or 11. At the time, I had no idea what it was, but kept seeing merch for the game everywhere at Walmart and online. It wasn’t until I discovered the gaming channel, “Camodo Gaming”, that I realized what it was and gained some interest in it that died and came back a bit later when I stumbled across some GameTheory videos talking about the lore of FNAF. While I haven’t become a huge Five Nights at Freddy’s fangirl, since then, I do consider myself knowledgable enough about the fandom to understand the larger story surrounding the game and the spinoff books. When it was announced that there would be a movie coming out based off of it, I was interested in seeing it and seeing how it possibly expanded the lore. However, after watching the movie, I left the sofa thinking, “Well…that was…anticlimactic.”

#1: The Animatronics

If nothing else, the animatronics were easily the best part of the movie. The Jim Henson company (who are best known for creating such nostalgic nightmare fuel as Fraggle Rock, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, etc.) outdid themselves in bringing the characters of Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and Springtrap to life. In the behind the scenes of the movie, you get to see all of the detail that went into making the puppets. Even the ones that were suits being worn by actors still had a ton of circuitry in them to make the puppets act like robots. For a movie with a budget of a measly $20 million USD, there was an amazing amount of care and respect for the story that went into the film.

#2: The Story

The story is easy enough to follow, though you could tell that there were some problems in the writing, which is understandable given the fact that there isn’t much immediate story in the first game to work off of, but Blumhouse could’ve done a better job.

The plot revolves around Mike Schmidt (who is the security guard that you play as in the game), a down-on-his-luck orphan who’s trying to support his little sister, Abby, and solve the mystery of who took his little brother. When he’s fired from one job and is offered a job to work as a security guard at Freddy’s he takes it immediately, not knowing what all the job really entails. While that’s easy enough to follow, there’s a ton of very depressing sub-plots thrown in that are quite absurd if you think about them long enough, such as the aunt paying off the babysitter to dig up stuff on Mike so she can have Abby for the money. You can tell that the writers were trying to add more story to the existing story, but it just fell flat in my opinion because there was just too much going on much of the time. The only good parts of the plot were the ones that were actually recognizable from the games, such as the animatronics killing people and ghost children luring people to their deaths.

#3: Blaring plotholes

In the games, there are a ton of plot holes, though they can be answered most of the time by saying “It’s a game.” Or – if they can’t be answered by the game itself – they’re usually answered by the other FNAF games or a couple of episodes of GameTheory videos (which have been proven to be correct several times by Scott Cawthon himself). However, when those plotholes from the game make their way into the movie, it becomes a huge problem because suddenly you see the security gaurd as a real person with senses other than just sight and hearing and you start to wonder how they’re missing all these red flags.

One of the biggest plotholes in the FNAF movie is: how is Mike not smelling the dead bodies? Even before the animatronics go on a killing spree when the vandals come in to destroy the restaurant, we see that the other security gaurd was killed and while we don’t know where Afton or the animatronics put him, you would assume that if he was still in the pizzeria, his corpse would be stinking up the place. On night two at Freddy’s, Mike cleans up the place and goes into the supply closet in the back rooms to get some supplies. We saw in other scenes that the supply closet isn’t too far from where the corpses were ultimately hidden, so why can’t he smell them rotting? There’s also the question of why didn’t he grow suspicious of the alarming amount of blood that would inevitably be on the ground from the guy who got his face ripped off? That would be kinda hard to miss.

Another plothole is the one regarding the security tapes. While I’m not entirely sure how security systems in the 70’s and 80’s worked, I’m pretty sure that the events of the day were recorded on tapes so you could go back and see what happened on a certain day if you needed to. Assuming that the pizzeria security system still has tapes that you can use to record things and assuming the cameras are running during the day as well (I would see no real reason why they wouldn’t be), why couldn’t Mike throw one into the T.V., see the animatronics killing everyone, and then quit and find a new job; maybe also take the tape with him as evidence to the police that something fishy was going on?

The last plothole I’m going to bring up is why didn’t anyone care to investigate the pizzeria after it collapsed with Afton’s death or any of the people that were there, especially since one of the people there was Afton’s daughter who – from context provided – would’ve been an accomplice in the murder of several people?

It just makes no sense.

#4: Character development

The development in the movie is quite sudden and can be summarized like this: depressed, depressed, depressed, happy, happy, depressed, terrified, terrified, happy, happy. The first two-thirds of the movie is very depressing with the undertones of a horror movie, then becomes kinda cute when Abby makes friends with the animatronics, becomes the usual horror film when the animatronics turn full evil, and ends with Abby and Mike being happy and content at the end, even though they just watched a friend be stabbed by her father, their aunt be murdered in their house (which – once again – where are the cops?), and the bad guy be killed in an excruciating fashion. I realize that some people have strange trauma responses, but in real life, the main characters – especially Abby – would’ve been super traumatized and would need therapy. It was like the writers realized that they needed character development at the last minute and just quickly threw that in because they needed to.

All in all, if you plan on watching the FNAF movie because you’re a fan of the IP, this movie is for you, but if you’re a casual viewer with no previous knowledge of the game watching for the story, maybe look elsewhere.

Until next time,

M.J.